I'm trying to "wipe clean" my old G4 HD before selling it. I reboot from Disc 1, original installation disc. Select language. Go to Disk Utility. Select Erase and options are greyed out. Help! What do I do. I know just Erase won't do it.....
Wiping Old HD
- Thread starter puppypat
- Start date
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2010
- Messages
- 3,558
- Reaction score
- 52
Its a bit hard for me to see;-)
Sorry but I don't have an old G4 to give an exact instruction, and they have changed Disk Utility.
One entry is the Drive and within that is the Partition, if you've selected the Partition i.e. the one named Macintosh HD, then try the Drive which has the name "like" 1 TB ST31000528ASQ Media. See if that helps.
Also the Format needs to be OS X.
You could also try re-partitioning it and see if that enables the Security Settings...
If its older than that then check the Menus for more options.
Sorry but I don't have an old G4 to give an exact instruction, and they have changed Disk Utility.
One entry is the Drive and within that is the Partition, if you've selected the Partition i.e. the one named Macintosh HD, then try the Drive which has the name "like" 1 TB ST31000528ASQ Media. See if that helps.
Also the Format needs to be OS X.
You could also try re-partitioning it and see if that enables the Security Settings...
If its older than that then check the Menus for more options.
Wow...you lost me there! You certainly know a lot..I've heard about partitions..but don't know anything about them. Does all that mean finishing the install and going into the HD to do something? You're dealing with a 71 yr old lady that was proud to have gotten this far! I know I don't want to go to Restore or First Aid. The Volume Format is Mac OS Extended(Journaled) and the Name is Macintosh HD. From what I read beforehand I think that is correct. The original system was 10. I do have the Tiger disk. Can I boot from that and get the Disk Utility? or do I need to get an application to wipe the computer of senesitvie data at this point?
I restarted with the initial installation Disc 1 and held down the C key. I selected English as the language. Then I went to the menu bar and opened the Disk Utility. On DU I went to erase. There were 2 things to do Erase and Options. In the left hand column I selected Mac HD (other option was the install disc and two numbers that I think go with those) At that point only the Erase button was available. The other button that said options was grayed out...is all this making sense. I'm a novice at this....
PS When I select the Erase button which I cancel it says "Erasing a volume will destroy all information on the volume. It will not erase information on other volumes on the same disk. Are you sure you wish to erase the volume "Macintosh HD"?
The first thing I did was update Lion..this notebook is "early 2011" Then I had tons of fun going thru all 29 system preferences customizing things. The Mission Control is a godsend for me because I research for my brother and have Firefox with 3-4 Word documents in the back. The hard part for me is having to use Mail. i couldn't afford an Office with Outlook (Entourage for me) this time. I have had lots of problems with it and was bumped up 3 times by Apple yesterday. I did manage to put the Mac HD in the upper right hand corner so I feel at home!
I just highlighted the Name section and changed it to Mac HD and hit erase. This time I got a progress bar that says preparing to erase and mounting disk . The progress bar then disappears. It whirrs for a bit and then quits. I changed the name back to Macintosh HD.
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2010
- Messages
- 3,558
- Reaction score
- 52
Strange, I went down to my workshop and checked our G4 and those options are enabled, so I don't know what to recommend. The next Tab over is the Partition settings, if you want to re-partition and see it that enables it.
How likely are the people you are giving the G4 to likely to buy a Data Recovery App, run it across an old G4 and look for your "sensitive" information???
You now need to reinstall OS X, and that is going to overwrite a large chunk of the HDrive, further making it very difficult to recover any information.
How likely are the people you are giving the G4 to likely to buy a Data Recovery App, run it across an old G4 and look for your "sensitive" information???
You now need to reinstall OS X, and that is going to overwrite a large chunk of the HDrive, further making it very difficult to recover any information.
I am going to sell it online. One site offered me big bucks...$400. If I could get $100 I'd be happy. It will go into my fund to buy Apple Care in 11 mos 30 days! I'm off to the next tab and re-partition and then go back and see if that enables it. If it does I'll do that and finish the OS X installation. Lordy, what time is it in NZ. I'm jealous...I live in flat IL and you have all that drop dead beauty!