Need to sell my G5, but need to wipe it clean first. How do I do it?

Hi Clueless21, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer or are including in the sale, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the Erase tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Highlight the drive, select Partition Tab, then Format type... MacOS Extended Journalled, select the Security Options button, choose Zero Out Data, Erase... after completion hopefully you'll be able to install a fresh copy... turn it off when it reboots to the initial setup & let the new owner fill in all that stuff. 🙂

if you know how to use Terminal, you can secure-erase your user data as well..

let's say your name is tom, and the new owner is Bill..

1. create a new user for the next owner..
go to sys pref's, amke a new Admin user - - - > "Bill"..

2. go to the root of the hard drive, and look at the name of YOUR user folder.. for instance if you're Tom Smith, it might be "tomsmith"

*BE WARNED.

BE VERY WARNED.

BE DOUBLE SURE YOU DO NOT NEED YOUR DATA BACK.

**YOU WILL ***__NOT__**GET YOUR DATA BACK IF YOU DO THIS *!!!!


IF, and only if you are dead sure you do NOT want any of your user data left on the drive, then..........

quit sys prefs, to to terminal, log in as SU, and put in your root password..


then type in srm -fsRv /Users/tomsmith
(((substitute your username in this (instead of "tomsmith")....

press return

terminal will hard-erase the Users folder.. all of it.

it will be gone. byebyebyebye..

it will also take a while, depending on how much space your data used

Great news, thanks! 🙂