How to Erase Hard Drive Mac OS X (LION) "Couldn't unmount disk"

Hi Everyone,
I've just transferred my data to a new computer and now need to erase the hard drive on my old one.. I've tried Disk Utility, increased the security, and tried 'erase' but I keep getting an error message "couldn't unmount disk". I've gone into Partitions and tried deleting the HD there as well but I get the same message. Does anyone know the solution for this? I just want to get the computer securely wiped and would like to keep Lion as the operating system.
Thanks in advance!
-Eric

Hi Frank,
Thanks for the quikc response. I booted up in the Recovery Disk I believe. I held option at boot up and chose the recovery disk option. Is that the correct method?
I may have figured out what I was doing wrong. I was clicking on the parent hard drive reading "1 TB WDC WD1001Fals..." Now I've clicked on the next level hard drive "Macintosh HD" and I believe it is working.
Looks like 5 hours to erase...

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