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Selling a Clamshell - Erase HDD - How?

W

Whatyacallit36

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hello, I am very new to Mac.

A ibook clamshell M6411 has been donated to me to sell for charity.
I need to erase the Hard drive so the personal info is erased before selling this unit.
I have spent about 3 hours looking for a solution. Including ifixit
to remove the HDD but that looks like a huge job...
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/iBook-G3-Clamshell-Hard-Drive/115/12

Right now it has Mac OS X Version 10.3.2
I would like to make the HDD BLANK
Any advice?
Thanks.
 
Do you have any OS X CDs? If so you can probably boot off that and then open up disk utility and do a multipass erase from there.

If not, you can get a PPC Linux disk and boot off of that, that will allow you to format the drive.. But I don't know of any specific bootable PPC linux disks with a wipe utility. But it being linux, if you can get to a command line you should be able to wipe it from there, I just don't know the 'command' needed.
 
Thanks, I have a Western Digital and Seagate utility (Install) disks.
What brand HDD shipped with this model?
If I format it 10 times, would that clear it good enough?
Thanks for all the help.
 
Whatyacallit36 said:
Thanks, I have a Western Digital and Seagate utility (Install) disks.
Click to expand...

Those won't work. You need a disk that's bootable on a Mac.

Whatyacallit36 said:
What brand HDD shipped with this model?
Click to expand...

I don't know about back then, but these days brands of hard drives vary from computer to computer, even within the same model/revision. There's no way of knowing without taking a peek at it in Disk Utility or opening the computer up.

Whatyacallit36 said:
If I format it 10 times, would that clear it good enough?
Click to expand...

Disk Utility in OS X supports a 7-pass erase algorithm, which should be more than enough. However, this computer came out well before my time.

What are the memory/processor specs of the machine?

Aha! It has been out-of-date for so long that I had forgotten that it exists, but BootCD will run on your computer. What you will need to do is have it save a disk image, then transfer that to another computer and burn the file to a disk. That disk should then be bootable, even if you burned on a PC. I believe BootCD includes Disk Utility by default, but you should be able to manually select it. Sorry, it has been so long since I used that app that I can't remember exactly how it works. It's a good place to start looking anyway.
 
Tried BootCD on the camshell.

I made a boot CD with my XP pro using Nero StartSmart 2.1.0.6
The Clamshell boots to the OS and not to the CD.
The CD is on the main screen but I cannot seem to get it to boot to the CD.

Being VERY new to Mac, Is there a setting on the BIOS or something that I am missing? Is there a key I need to press during boot to get to the BIOS?
Thanks for any help on this matter. Sorry for being a major novice. 😕
 
Whatyacallit36 said:
I made a boot CD with my XP pro using Nero StartSmart 2.1.0.6
The Clamshell boots to the OS and not to the CD.
The CD is on the main screen but I cannot seem to get it to boot to the CD.

Being VERY new to Mac, Is there a setting on the BIOS or something that I am missing? Is there a key I need to press during boot to get to the BIOS?
Thanks for any help on this matter. Sorry for being a major novice. 😕
Click to expand...
Yes, immediately after hearing the chime, hold C. If that doesn't work, try again, and hold Option and it will take you to a boot list where you can select the CD.
 
Start in single user mode (hold Apple + S on startup.)

Follow any instructions that appear on screen.

Type srm -rvs /

Hit return.

That command will overwrite every file on the hard disk. It won't erase already deleted files, however.
 
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