How to erase macbook with broken cd drive?

i need to completely wipe my wife's MacBook computer but the CD drive does not work. and can't read the install disk. Can anyone point me to some simple steps that will ensure it can be completely erased? Thanks!

macjack wrote:
Hey, I didn't even mention the sudo rm you don't care for
That will trash the directory but leave the data on the disk. You want the dd command.
It would be something along these lines.
rm everything on the directory then do.
mac $ dd if=/dev/zero  bs=1024 count=1kx1k of=/Volumes/MacOSFirewire/zero
1048576+0 records in
1048576+0 records out
1073741824 bytes transferred in 77.977957 secs (13769812 bytes/sec)
Note this command isn't harmful in itself. It creates the file zero.
Delete the file zero.
*How zero a partition*
boot in single user mode.
#It is best to do the pdisk command before you eject the external hard drive. Now, eject the external hard drive. Do another pdisk command to see what drive name has disappeared. The disappearing name is the name of your external hard drive.
pdisk -l
unmount the partition
use dd to zero the partition.
Robert

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