erase mac hard drive

is there any way to erase the hard drive of a mac without the original
CD that came with the computer?

In article <ec6c04e3-ea34-4147-99b1-957c66d02fed@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
Pixie <pixiestickspixie@googlemail.com> wrote:
>is there any way to erase the hard drive of a mac without the original
>CD that came with the computer?

MacOS? Or Mac OS-X ?

Generally, with unix systems, dd if=/dev/zero of=HARDDISKDEVFILE
where HARDDISKDEVFILE is the device file name of the hard disk,
will erase the drive. Depending on exactly which device file
you name, this may or may not wipe out the partition table.

This is *not*, by the way, a "secure erase", and it makes
no effort to erase sectors that have been spared out or anything
like that.

On Jan 30, 3:01*am, rober...@hushmail.com (Walter Roberson) wrote:
> In article <ec6c04e3-ea34-4147-99b1-957c66d02...@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
>
> Pixie *<pixiestickspi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >is there any way to erase the hard drive of a mac without the original
> >CD that came with the computer?
>
> MacOS? Or Mac OS-X ?
>
> Generally, with unix systems, dd if=/dev/zero of=HARDDISKDEVFILE
> where HARDDISKDEVFILE is the device file name of the hard disk,
> will erase the drive. Depending on exactly which device file
> you name, this may or may not wipe out the partition table.
>
> This is *not*, by the way, a "secure erase", and it makes
> no effort to erase sectors that have been spared out or anything
> like that.

thanks so much for your post, it is a macbook mac OS X version 10.4.8
(sorry i should have said)... i searched "harddiskdevfile" in mac help
and it didnt come up.. am i missing something?

Pixie <pixiestickspixie@googlemail.com> writes:

> On Jan 30, 3:01*am, rober...@hushmail.com (Walter Roberson) wrote:
> > In article <ec6c04e3-ea34-4147-99b1-957c66d02...@s8g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> > Pixie *<pixiestickspi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > >is there any way to erase the hard drive of a mac without the original
> > >CD that came with the computer?
> >
> > MacOS? Or Mac OS-X ?
> >
> > Generally, with unix systems, dd if=/dev/zero of=HARDDISKDEVFILE
> > where HARDDISKDEVFILE is the device file name of the hard disk,
> > will erase the drive. Depending on exactly which device file
> > you name, this may or may not wipe out the partition table.
> >
> > This is *not*, by the way, a "secure erase", and it makes
> > no effort to erase sectors that have been spared out or anything
> > like that.
>
> thanks so much for your post, it is a macbook mac OS X version 10.4.8
> (sorry i should have said)... i searched "harddiskdevfile" in mac help
> and it didnt come up.. am i missing something?

Hi Pixie,

That's because that's a placeholder for you to put your hard disk's
device name.

Go into applications> utilities> and open a terminal

At the prompt issue the command

mount

And look for what disk is mounted on the / directory. On my iBook
dual usb, instance, the first line of the output of mount is

/dev/disk0s10 on / (local, journaled)

Therefore, /dev/disk0s10 is the physical device name for my hard
disk.

Therefore, to blow away my own hard disk, the command from the
terminal prompt would be:
-----------------------------------------------------
!!!!!WARNING THIS COMMAND COMPLETELY ERASES YOUR HARD DISK!!!!!
------------------------------------------------------

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0s10

Which says "block copy from the device that always outputs a 0 to the
output file of physical disk0s10." If you want to be more "thorough"
you could do another pass once that's done with

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/disk0s10

and then another pass of zero's ...


If you have multiple partitions and are impatient, and of=/dev/disk0
might do the entire drive including all partitions. Not sure though.
Most of my dd use has been under linux.

Best Regards,
--
Todd H.
http://www.toddh.net/

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 18:28:02 -0800 (PST), Pixie wrote:

> is there any way to erase the hard drive of a mac without the original
> CD that came with the computer?

Using the CD is difficult, scrug, rub, scratch, etc. Use a fingernail.

Pixie expressed precisely :
> is there any way to erase the hard drive of a mac without the original
> CD that came with the computer?

DBAN?

http://www.dban.org

If you are talking about whole disk wiping, no matter the OS