How do I wipe my hard drive?

Question

I have an iMac G5.  I'd like to wipe the hard drive so I can donate it, and have tried restarting while holding down the "c" key with the Mac OS X Install CD inserted into the drive, in an attempt to restart from the CD, but the computer does not boot up from the CD as it should.  I've also tried holding down the "option" key while rebooting, but again am not given the option to boot up from the CD.  Any ideas?  When I try clicking on "Install Mac OS X" directly from the CD, an error message pops up that says "The applicationi Install Mac OS X quit unexpectedly."  The problem details read: "Library not loaded.."  Does it seem like I have a bad Mac OS X Install CD?  Any other ideas for wiping my hard drive?

Answer 1

Could be the DVD, so try cleaning it. But could be the optical drive is faulty. If you have another Mac, you could try connecting the two in Firewire Target Disk Mode to use the optical drive of the other Mac.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1661
From Disk Utility, you want to go to Erase>Security Options>Zero Data.
If that still won't do it, then boot the G5 in single user mode. Cmd-s at the startup chime. At the prompt enter
AND, IMPORTANT, THE FOLLOWING WILL ERASE NOT ONLY THE USER DATA, BUT THE OS INSTALLED AS WELL. BE SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS. See below for directions for deleting only users/accounts.
mount -uw /
and hit return. Then enter
rm -rf /
hit return, and watch the entire thing, all user data and the OS, disappear before your eyes.
But this won't zero erase the data. It might still be recoverable by a software recovery program.
If you only want to remove the user accounts, you must know their short names and enter
rm -rf /Users/shortnameofuser
If the short name is more than one word put that in quotes, which would be "short name of user"