Q: how do I wipe my emac?
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Oct 2, 2012 12:01 PMby BDAqua,10.4 & up does have the Erase Free Space option.
It's not how much space is used, what happens when you trash files/folders is the just the locations of the files the Sectors where they are stored is released to the OS to use again, a bit like removing Street signs so new Street names/signs can be used, the houses are still there, & if you Know your way around you can still get to them, until the OS puts up new street signs & bulldozes those houses.
Here's a quick simple example of Using DataRescueX on a DMG, it found 2 erased fils it could recover...
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Oct 3, 2012 7:24 AMby blew42,OK, so by analogy, this sounds like the time I managed to inadvertantly "delete" all my Firefox bookmarks, and in frantically searching thru the computer fround an option "restore deleted bookmarks" and presto they were back, not totally "deleted", just kind of temporarily removed from the browser?
My present version is 10.2.4. If i were to uprade to 10.4, I assume that it would then yield the "erase free space" option, and I could then erase the free space -- if the button was not greyed out, as the "erase" and "option' buttons are presently. Would that be worth a try?
In looking at the Disk Utility screen, I see that all the boxes on erase, partition and RAID boxes are greyed out, and I can't find any way to un-grey them after devoting considerable time to the effort. So assuming someone wanted to hack into my eMac, how much expertise would it take, and is theere any way to know how much of the data would be retrieveable thru DataX or other means. Guess what I'm asking is how much danger I would be in, or if it would be easier to just remove the hard drive and destroy it?
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Oct 3, 2012 9:29 PMby BDAqua,If i were to uprade to 10.4, I assume that it would then yield the "erase free space" option, and I could then erase the free space -- if the button was not greyed out, as the "erase" and "option' buttons are presently. Would that be worth a try?
Correct.
Guess what I'm asking is how much danger I would be in, or if it would be easier to just remove the hard drive and destroy it?
Not a lot of danger, but not much expertise required.
Another possibility is to use Disk Utility to make a huge DMG, Make copies of it until it nearly dills the drive, then trash those DMgs, & empty trash.
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Dec 27, 2012 8:11 AMby blew42,OK, been out of area traveling for some time. Finally got around to wiping eMac using the DMG method. took quite a while, but was able to create DMG large enough to equal memory, in 56gb range. Trashed everything on computer, including preloaded applications. Used system sottware install and reload disc to reinstall existing software 10.2.4. However, none of my user accounts will now open, it looks like in trashing everything, it included that. All I get when Mac boots up is box asking for user name and pw, none of the ones I have work, including the original administrator one. Is there any way to recover this info or create new account??
