Erasing a drive with a locked partition

I have a drive with a locked partition. I can unlock it no problem, but I would now like to erase the whole drive and repartition with only one partition before I pass the computer on to someone else. Does anyone know how to reset the drive to a single unlocked partition. Thanks very much.
All the best,
Tom

Tom,
What happens if you boot from an installer disc? How did you "lock" the drive? Do you know how to "unlock" it? Did you unlock it first? Is this your startup volume on the internal drive or is it an external drive?
If this is a startup drive and you are running Lion or Mountain Lion, and if you want to erase the drive, repartition, and reinstall Lion or Mountain Lion
Install or Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion from Scratch
Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Erase the hard drive:
1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After DU loads select your startup volume (usually Macintosh HD) from the
      left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
3. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Optionally, click on
        the Security button and set the Zero Data option to one-pass. Click on
      the Erase button and wait until the process has completed. Now select
      the second partition, click on the Delete [-] button. Grab the sizing handle
      in the lower right corner of the remaining volume and drag it to the bottom
      of the rectangle. Click on the Apply button.
4. Quit DU and return to the main menu.
Reinstall Lion: Select Reinstall Lion/Mountain Lion and click on the Install button.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible
            because it is three times faster than wireless.

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First you need to seriously back up your Mac.
A clone is an exact duplicate of your existing Mac HDD. Merely copying and pasting a drive will not make a bootable backup. In case of problems you can boot from an Ext HDD clone and use the utilities to repair, reformat, or clone the Ext HDD back to the internal Mac HDD. While Time machine back ups are easy you can not boot from it. The best thing to have for any kind of problem is a bootable clone backup on an external drive. Some even have two external backup drives in case one fails. There are two good apps for cloning named SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner.
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1) Make the Recovery visible in Disk Utility by using a program like Secrets:http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/27025/secrets or MacPilot:http://www.koingosw.com/products/macpilot.php (15 day free trial).
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3) With the Recovery partition highlited, erase the partition, you'll get an error message, ignore it.
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By the way, the disk used to formatted as a windows disk. I suspect it has something to do with it but have no idea what. Any help is greatly appreciated!

HI - i do not think this is purely metadata. (though it could be with your windows disk with such small used memory) i have a 1TB macbook pro drive that i have tried to reformat
METHOD 1 (recommended by advanced Apple Techy) - select hard drive (not partition) select mac os (journalled) and press 'apply' - "this will format drive removing all data. it is always best to work with the drive and not partition, if you are formatting an entire drive."
result at end - drive still shows single partition 999GB WITH 668GB USED
METHOD 2 (after response from Apple techy) - select hard drive and mac os (journalled), press secure erase and select 'write zeros' takes 12 hours
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Why can't I Erase system drive with Security Options?

I'm getting ready to return my MacBook Pro and I want to wipe the system drive. I've booted in recovery using cmd+r. I opened Disk Utility, selected the SSD drive and the Erase tab. The Security Options button is grayed out. How do I securely erase the drive?

That's not available on SSDs; performing a regular erase is enough. Click here for more information.
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More then 2 partitions on an external drive with a Fat32 partition...

Hey guys. I'm having some troubles with partitioning an external USB drive in disk utility.
I want to have 4 partitions total, 3x MAC OS Extended (journaled) and 1x FAT 32.
I am able to create the partitions (using GPT) fine in disk utility and as far as the OSX is concerned, all the partitions are viewable and work fine however windows machines do not see the fat32 partition. Windows only sees one large GUID partition that it cannot read.
If I reformat the drive (using GPT) with 1 MAC OS Ext (journaled) partition and 1 FAT32 partition, both windows and the Mac find all the partitions and things work as they should.
I want 4 partitions so I can have a data drive for OSX, a bootable copy of the snow leopard install disc, a bootable copy of a fresh snow leopard installation and a windows data drive for exchanging files.
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savante wrote:
Hey guys. I'm having some troubles with partitioning an external USB drive in disk utility.
I want to have 4 partitions total, 3x MAC OS Extended (journaled) and 1x FAT 32 .... Windows only sees one large GUID partition that it cannot read. If I reformat the drive (using GPT) with 1 MAC OS Ext (journaled) partition and 1 FAT32 partition, both windows and the Mac find all the partitions and things >work as they should.
I would try NTFS. I know that that would prevent you from doing anything with the partition from your Mac, but that's sort of a small price to pay. To compensate partially, you could run MacDrive (mediafour.com) on the Windows machine(s). MacDrive allows Windows machines to read and write Mac formatted drives.
Is there anyway I can do this or do I need to stick to 2 partitions if I want the fat32 partition to be readable by windows?
Could there be a problem with the way Sno is formatting FAT. I never use FAT so I am not quite sure what is going on here. But, many have reported that the Sno Disk Utility no long refers to FAT32, just to FAT, and having FAT formatted, they have FAT problems--i.e., things don't work like they should under FAT32. Maybe you should try formatting with an Install DVD that clears specifies FAT32.

Odd Issue when using Firewire drive with Leopard-Locks up Dock, etc.

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1) Boot from the Recovery Disk (I'm assuming that the backup hard drive is attached before you reboot)
2) Select Paragon Hard Disk Manager
3) Launch the Backup Wizard by selecting Wizards > Backup Wizard
4) Select the Mac hard disk (not the partition) where it asks "what to backup"
5) On the Backup Destination page, select "Save data to any local drive or a network share"
6) Hit the radio button for the "Save to local drive option" (unless you got a boatload of DVD's )
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8) Look over and correct the name and comments
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Hard Drive Preparation
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2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
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I am selling one of my older Macbooks to someone soon. I was curious if using the install disks to erase the hard drive would be a secure way to erase? Any suggestions to make this process quick and secure? Thanks!

evan127 wrote:
So erasing from the install disk is a secure way to clear the hard drive? I just don't want anyone recovering my files.
There are some things that you just can't do from a system drive. One is erase the system volume by itself, and the other is to repair a volume by itself (although I heard rumors that it might have changed to some degree). If you wipe the drive, you're basically leaving it without an operating system.
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FORMAT WINDOWS 7(64) BY MISTAKEN NOW HOW I RECOVER ERASED DATA WHICH I HAD LOCKED DRIVE BY BIT LOCKER

i'm using windows 7 (64 bit) but experiment to install mac on my PC (i 5-4 GB ddr 3-500sata sea gate).by mistaken its format my whole hard drive which is 500 GB sea gate sata.after this i'm confused and install windows 8.1 and then again i had install windows
7 (64 bit) now after 2 time partition erased i'm trying to recover my data 50 percent data but which drive i had locked with windows 7 bit locker it cant recover any thing I've remember its password.
any one help me to get back my data from this locked drive ?

RB
If the drive was both formatted and bit locked you cannot recover your data.
Wanikiya and Dyami--Team Zigzag

Unable to erase external hard drive with Disk Utility

Macbook Pro (mid 2010) running 10.9
Hello
Recently, my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB external hard drive has not been showing up on my desktop or in finder. The light is on when connected, and in the Disk Utility it appears.
1. It was naturally created with a partition on it (all of the 1TB allocated to it) and it appears in the Disk Utility as well; however, it is grayed out.
2. I clicked the actual drive in DU and it was verified as being ok. I clicked on the partition next to verify and it said "Error disk needs repaired"
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5. Ok, so I click the erase tab on the entire external hard drive...erase..."Disk cannot be unmounted"
6. Ok, I try to erase the invidual partition..."Could not open disk"
It seems every time I try to erase this drive completely im hitting blocks. I even tried this method from the OS X Recovery menu (Command+R on startup). I would greatly appreciate any help to just get this whole thing external hard drive erased and start anew. How else would I go about this?
(pictures for reference)
Thank you all

If this is your only backup device, you need to start a new backup on another drive immediately. Don't erase (or try to erase) your only backup.
After you have the other backup, boot into Recovery and try again to erase the volume. You will have to unlock it before you can do anything with it, because it's encrypted.
If you still can't erase it, the drive has failed.

Erasing a drive with a locked partition

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