Disk Utilities - Zero HD

Question

I am selling my iBook G4 - 1.33 Mhz, 60 Gig HD running 10.3.9.
I began to zero the HD and chose 8 times (in hindsite should have chosen once) in disk utility. It wrote random data to the hard drive for about 20 hours or so. When I left this morning it was close to 3/4 of the way done. When I got back about 9 hours later it still showed about 3/4 (had moved a bit) but the window changed its venue from writing random data to "Creating Partition Map". I can't tell if the progress bar has continued to move from the 3/4 point and the the rainbow wheel cursor is still spinning.
Is this normal or has disk utility "frozen"? If this is typical behavior, then how long does it take to finish the process of wiping the hard drive? If not normal, what should I be doing?
Thank you in advance for any assistance.

Answer 1

indyopal:
Is it normal to see the pinwheel (beachball)? No. Dr. Smoke says:The "please wait" progress indicator — where your mouse pointer changes from an arrow to the rotating color wheel or "spinning beach ball" seen at right — generally indicates that your system is engaged in a very processor-intensive activity.
In most cases, the "beach ball" will usually disappear within five to ten seconds, depending on the processor speed of, and installed RAM in, the Mac®. For example, applying a Gaussian blur to a large file in Adobe® Photoshop® can be a very processor-intensive activity.
However, there are cases when the "beach ball" spins for a much longer period of time, a condition sometimes referred to as The Spinning Beach Ball of Death (SBBOD).I don't understand why this should take place during erasing the disk. How long have you been in the process of erasing, again?
The method to which I referred as preferable
This is the simple method and doesn't involve erasing the hard drive.
Boot from your OS X Installer. After the installer loads select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (or Utilities menu if using Tiger.) After DU loads select your OS X volume from the list on the left, click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (3.0.3 for Tiger) and/or TechTool Pro (4.1.2 for Tiger) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Next, boot to single user mode. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-S keys until the computer starts up to a black screen with white type.
3. At the prompt, type the following commands, each command followed by the Return key:
/sbin/fsck -yf
mount -uw /
rm /private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone
shutdown -r now
The second-to-last command above will cause OS X to think that the operating system is newly installed, and when you reboot, it will send you through the Startup Wizard.
This is the long method:
Follow these instructions step by step to prepare a Mac for sale:
First, back up the data:
1) Shut down all Virtual PCs. They cannot be in their "fast saved" state. They must be shut down from inside Windows.
2) Clone to an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner.
Next, prepare the machine for the new buyer:
3) Deauthorize the computer in iTunes! Deauthorize both iTunes and Audible accounts.
4) Remove Open Firmware passwords
5) Turn the brightness full up and volume nearly so.
Install a fresh OS:
6) Insert the OS X install CD/DVD.
7) Restart the computer while holding down the C key to boot from the CD/DVD.
8) Run Disk Utility from the file menu and erase the internal hard drive (optionally zero all data).
9) Install OS X.
10) Reboot the computer.
11) From the welcome screen, you can skip the registration step by typing command-Q.
12) When prompted, create an account (it will be an admin account).
13) From your new admin account, configure networking.
14) Then use Software Update to bring your system and all of it's applications up to date.
15) From Disk Utility, repair permissions on the new volume.
Now delete the account you just created:
16) Boot from a different volume (e.g. a firewire drive, if available)
17) Clean up the image using the following terminal commands:
prompt> rm /Volumes/<imagevol>/var/db/BootCache.playlist
prompt> rm /Volumes/<imagevol>/var/db/volinfo.database
prompt> rm -r /Volumes/<imagevol>/var/vm/swap*
18) Now you can get rid of the admin account you used to set up the machine Use the terminal:
prompt> nicl -raw /Volumes/<imagevol>/var/db/netinfo/local.nidb -delete /users/<admin>
prompt> rm -r /Volumes/<imagevol>/Users/<admin>
prompt> rm /Volumes/<imagevol>/var/db/.AppleSetupDone
19) Shut down and ship it to your buyer. When they get it, it will boot to the Welcome screen just like a factory Mac, except that it's better because it's completely up to date.
with thanks to Kappy.
Good luck.
cornelius