Wipe G4 for sale?

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Level 1

8 points

Wipe G4 for sale?

I have a Power Mac G4 with two hard drives and one CD/RW - everything works ok.

I am mostly a PC guy so a bit confused by the Mac modus operandum...

What I would LIKE to do is completely securely wipe the system but Leave OS X Tiger running.

Is there a way to, for instance, remove the non-OS X hard drive, install an unformatted hard drive, format that, then copy [bootable] the OS X partition onto the new, then nuke everything else [i.e., remove the old drive, boot up the newly-formatted drive] ?? In the PC world I could do this but maybe not here....

given the system's low value, I'm not going to bother with finding 9.2.2 disc, start over from scratch, then build it back up to Tiger. not worth that much trouble.

suggestions?

iMac, iMac Ruby G3 400 Slot

Posted on Feb 6, 2016 8:00 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Feb 8, 2016 2:02 PM in response to T-west

It sounds like you could do that, or...

Open System Preferences>Accounts, unlock the lock, click on the little plus icon, make a new admin account, log out & into the new account.

In the same pref pane highlight your old account, click the little minus icon, then use Disk Utility to Secure Erase Free Space.

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Answer 2

T-west Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 7, 2016 2:28 PM in response to BDAqua

thank you BD

let me ask a followon or two

- how do I determine for sure which drive is being booted from, and whether the other drive has OS X also. I suspect what happened here was typical: the original drive was small and user ran out of space, added a second drive which has much more capacity and 'cloned' the first to the second. will disk utility tell me all that and which ver of OS X is on the non-booting drive now?

i did setup a brand new Admin account, so should be easy to do as you suggested. I'll then run a forensics tool to make sure the data is effectively non-recoverable

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Feb 8, 2016 2:02 PM in response to T-west

Apple icon>About this Mac should show which drive it's booted from.

System Preferences>Startup Disk should sghow which drives have a bootable OS on them.

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Answer 4

T-west Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 8, 2016 2:08 PM in response to BDAqua

super helpful. both tips pay off.

really odd: i had guessed in ignorance that they were identical at the os level. partly correct. looks like the original 9.2.2 was cloned over at some point, but only the second/larger drive, having been selected as the startup disk, was upgraded to tiger.

What is the significance of "9..2.2 disk drivers installed" ? The second drive, which it is booting from, shows "No" whereas the original drive is Yes.

At any rate, it should be that I simply remove and ditch the original drive, move the secondary drive to channel 0 then see what's left of documents/files/applications/etc. I had already started what you suggested, deleting the main user account, files and all, permanently. taking a LONG time..

appreciate your help

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Feb 8, 2016 3:17 PM in response to T-west

What is the significance of "9..2.2 disk drivers installed" ?

Those are needed to natively boot into OS9 or earlier, without those OS9 can only be used in emulated Classic Mode.

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Answer 6

T-west Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 9, 2016 3:27 PM in response to BDAqua

is there a utility somewhere that will run on Tiger that will secure-erase all the free space? - whole drive. I see a few utilities, not sure about their integrity, but all for 10.5 or later. or will the one you mentioned to secure erase old account somehow work for the whole drive? I'm all done except for being OCD about leaving any user data behind

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Answer 7

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Feb 9, 2016 7:55 PM in response to T-west

Yes, Disk Utility will do that, but you need the Install CD/DVD or another boot drive to do that, or another Mac with Firewire & this one in Firewire Target Disk Mode.

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Answer 8

Feb 23, 2016 8:45 AM in response to T-west

Hello Guys, I see that you already gave two options. BUT perhaps I was stupid and erased my whole intern HDD because I wanted to start from scratch.

The reason why: I could not make a new admin account and when I did, it did not recognise my password each time.

SO:

1. I installed my ISO file for os x 10.5 on a bootable external HDD

2. erased the intern hdd (with disk utility)

3. tried to install but got the message that I could not install os x 10.5 (while it was already installed before I erased the internal hdd)

4. So I merged my 4 iso discs for os x 10.4 and made a bootable external hdd

5. I could select it at start up with OPTION but when it start loading I see after a couple of seconds black square and under it the loading circle (takes for ages)

There is nothing happening and I know I have usb 1 on the G4 but still.... My bootable os x 10.5 installation did not take so much time.

Does anyone knows what I am doing wrong?

Perhaps I do not need to merge the iso files but make each discs a bootable partition?

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Answer 9

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Feb 24, 2016 4:10 PM in response to mactester2015

If it's more than one ISO, ie. the CD version, then you need separate Partitions for each, 10.5 was ond DVD, 10.4 was available as one DVD or 4-5 CDs.

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