how to erase hardrive

[lisag35]

Hi All -- I'm new to this forum so forgive me any blunders.

I have an old Power 7500/100 Mac PC, which I would like to donate, but I'd like to completely erase the hard drive of all myn personal material first. Anybody know the best way to do it?

Thanks,
LisaG.

 

[Frogurt]

I'm not sure what OS you are running, but I thought that the later ones (8.6/9) would let you erase the harddrive when you did an install. When you boot off the disk, search around in the installer and disk utility. Sorry I can't help more, it's been awhile since I did a system 9 install.

 

[kered22]

I can't quite recall the OS 9 Disk Utility either, but you'll have to startup off the OS 8/9 CD first (restart and just after hear the bong, hold down the C key).

If you see a background made up of CD's, then you're booting off the CD.

There is a copy of Disk Utility on the CD, go ahead and open that. I think there are options in there to overwrite all data on the disk with zeroes. I think it's a checkbox labelled as Zero all data or something, I think you hit the options button. Just a simple reformat won't work since all the old data will remain intact until it's overwritten. If you overwrite it with zeroes, it will be harder to recover.

 

[lisag35]

Hi All -- I'm new to this forum so forgive me any blunders.

I have an old Power 7500/100 Mac PC, which I would like to donate, but I'd like to completely erase the hard drive of all myn personal material first. Anybody know the best way to do it?

Thanks,
LisaG.

thanks. I still have an OS 8 CD I'll give it a try.
Lisa G.