Erasing a macbook harddrive when the screen is broken
Hello all,
My macbook met its untimely demise at the hands of an utterly broken screen (never fear, we had insurance and were serious Time Machine users!). I'm giving it to a local University to use for parts, but I want to utterly wipe the harddrive first. The problem, of course, is that the screen doesn't work, so I can't exactly click on anything or select anything. Besides the screen, the macbook's in perfect working order (boots up, runs the OS, etc), so it's not that the machine can't run a format or anything, it's that I can't see the icons to select them.
Does anyone know of a way to erase the harddrive somewhat remotely? We have other computers that we could use to access the macbook over a network. Normally, I'd just buy a miniDVI-VGA cord, but we run macbook pros in the rest of the house, so we'd be spending money on a cable we'd never use again.
jhfortier wrote:
They've asked that the macbook be unopened to ensure that we don't break anything by removing the harddrive.
I would be severely surprised if you managed to break anything by removing the hard drive. The tools you would need are a coin and a #00 Phillips screwdriver. If all you're doing is removing it, you probably don't need a T-8 Torx screwdriver for the drive mounting bracket. I would be surprised if you managed to break anything removing the hard drive. Here's the process in photos:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/MacBook-Core-2-Duo-Hard-Drive-Replacement/514 /1
I'll probably just use the firewire method; I'd hate to break a bunch of the parts and then have the thing end up in the garbage. Thanks so much.
Sure - no prob. I didn't quite catch that earlier comment where you noted that you had MacBook Pros in the house. You should be able to reformat/erase the drives using that in FW target mode.
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Process: Disk Utility [371]
Path: /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app/Contents/MacOS/Disk Utility
Identifier: com.apple.DiskUtility
Version: 11.5.2 (298.4)
Build Info: DiskUtility-2980400~60
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [86]
Date/Time: 2013-11-05 03:29:41.247 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
Report Version: 6
Interval Since Last Report: 9522 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 29
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 981 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 25
Anonymous UUID: F6B8E263-76C8-4C7D-AA58-48134BF4BA78
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
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Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
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2 libobjc.A.dylib 0x0000000100c62761 map_images + 115
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5 dyld 0x00007fff5fc04d54 dyld::link(ImageLoader*, bool, ImageLoader::RPathChain const&) + 118
6 dyld 0x00007fff5fc08f7c dlopen + 490
7 libSystem.B.dylib 0x0000000100a14e40 dlopen + 61
8 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x0000000100d78ef7 _CFBundleDlfcnLoadBundle + 231
9 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x0000000100d77e97 _CFBundleLoadExecutableAndReturnError + 1191
10 com.apple.Foundation 0x0000000101008355 _NSBundleLoadCode + 638
11 com.apple.Foundation 0x0000000101007c78 -[NSBundle loadAndReturnError:] + 742
12 com.apple.Foundation 0x000000010101960c -[NSBundle principalClass] + 38
13 com.apple.framework.DUSupport 0x0000000100082080 -[DUModuleManager(_private) findDUModules:] + 405
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23 com.apple.AppKit 0x00000001014f79ab -[NSApplication _doOpenUntitled] + 257
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34 com.apple.AppKit 0x00000001013c168f -[NSApplication run] + 395
35 com.apple.AppKit 0x00000001013ba3b0 NSApplicationMain + 364
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