Securely erase old iMac G4
I have eventually replaced my old G4 with a current model, and it is now redundant.
What is the best way to make sure no personal details or data remains on the system before I dispose of it ?
Also, can anyone suggest options for disposal ?
Hi,
You may want to have a look at the following articles:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1820
http://www.macworld.com/article/1141358/securely_wipe_hard_drive.html
An iMac G4 has a certain value. You could perhaps donate the machine to a charity, or give it to someone with an interest in older Macintosh computers.
Jan
Similar Messages
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I've been reading up on how to clean your hard drive so personal information can't be accessed, but if you can't get to your hard drive to clean it up, what are you supposed to do? My town is offering an electronics recycling and I was hoping to drop off my old iMac and Powerbook. I can turn the iMac on, but the display is really bad and almost unreadable. The Powerbook is completely dead. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Since both computers have operational problems, I'd suggest removing the hard drives from them. That way, you'll have possession of the drives and their data. Considering their age, I doubt that the recycling program will attempt to repair these computers for donation to needy parties, but if you thought so, you could buy a $15 adapter that would let you connect the bare drive to a USB port on your functioning computer. Once connected, you could erase the drives and reinstall them. You didn't indicate which iMac you have, but if it's a G3 model, this Macworld article has illustrated directions for hardware upgrades, which would show you how to remove the hard drive. If your iMac is a G3 (400 MHz or faster) with the additional VGA port concealed under the plastic door on the rear of its underside, you could connect a VGA display and attempt setting up video mirroring. Once done, you could wipe the drive, while using the connected display to navigate through the procedure. This would eliminate the need to open the bottom of the housing, to access the hard drive for removal. As for the PowerBook, you could post a topic in its specific Forum (depending on the model) and request directions for hard drive removal. Post back as to your preferred option, if you have any questions regarding it.
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I recently bought a new iMac and am giving my old iMac to my brother. I read up on how to erase my information before handing it over to my brother but they process included having my installation disk. I do not have that disk. I need to erase my information and upgrade the computer.
"Tiger Tiger burning bright ..." (sorry for the poetic diversion ...)
You can call Apple Customer Support, give them the serial number of the unit and pay $16 per disk to get new copies. But they may not re-burn Tiger anymore.
If that is the case, you have to consider buying Tiger disks from an online store, or move up in the cat family.
Leopard disks only require PPC processors, and run $180 or so. Apple *may* have some Leopard in stock if you call them. Else you go online.
If the sysem has Intel processor, you can jump up to Snow Leopard, which is $29 in the Apple Online Store.
AppleMenu > About This Mac ... what is the memory amount and processor type? -
How do I erase ALL data on my 8 year old iMac 10.6.8?
I'd like to erase ALL data on my 8 year old iMac 10.6.8 before hauling it off to electornics recycling. I have the original Snow Leopard start up disc but need help in it's use for this purpose. Any help would be appreciated. Richard
Sorry RK I was having trouble posting the pertinent Snow Leopard article earlier, but looks like the OP got there without it.
Humm... it still won't let me post it. -
I ran out of space on my time machine because I bought a new I MAC to replace the old one. So I copied the old one on the new one and in addition to that I own a macbook. So what should I do erase the old IMAC on my Time capsule ? Shall I reset it?
Go to the airport utility and erase the TC disk.. a quick erase is fine and takes less than 1min usually.
A one pass erase takes several hours depending on how big the hard disk is.. but is somewhat safer in that it tests the drive condition. I normally don't bother for a TM backup.
When you start over you should be able to fit both backups on the TC.. assuming the disk is 2x larger at least than the space used on both the MB and the iMac.
If not you can also add a USB drive to the TC, and use that for one of the computers.
The slowest one is best.. as USB is slow.. but fast enough for wireless you won't notice much. -
I have a 4 yr. old iMac. I recently got a trojan on it that sent out emails to my address book. I got Norton Internet Security for Mac, and now my Mac is running slow, with way too many spinning beach balls of death. Was it a mistake to install Norton?
yankeecat wrote:
I have a 4 yr. old iMac. I recently got a trojan on it that sent out emails to my address book.
There is no such Trojan or other malware known today that will do that using OS X nor has there ever been one. The most probable explanation is that somebody hacked into your e-mail account on the server, so you should change that password to something stronger right away. If it had come from your Mac then there would almost certainly be copies of those messages in your Sent Mail mailbox. -
I was transferring data from my old iMac to my new iMac via Time Machine. After about 4 hours, the electrical power fluctuated and turned off my wi-fi. Now most of my necessary programs are useless. How do I erase that mess and start over?
Hello there, LynnS.
The following Knowledge Base article and it's referenced link should get you started with the Erase and Install of Mavericks:
OS X Mavericks: Erase and reinstall OS X
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14243
Once you've gone through those 2 articles, this article should help you with restoring from your Time Machine Backup:
OS X Mavericks: Recover your entire system
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14185
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.
Cheers,
Pedro. -
How do I erase all the data on an old imac?
How do I erase all the data on an old imac, so I can safely sell/give it away without any personal information on it?
JoelBoot with your original install discs, launch Disk Utility from the Utilities menu, select the HD, erase, reformat, and zero out the data. Once that's finished, reinstall the OS and on first boot quit the installer and shutdown the machine. Give the original discs to the new owner and when they start it up, they'll experience the first time Setup Assistant. Since it's not a new machine, there should be nothing associated with Lion or ML to muck things up.
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After attempting secure erase, iMac w/homemade fusion drive won't boot from *anything*
2009 iMac with homemade fusion drive (SSD installed in optical bay). Was working fine with Yosemite until I attempted to secure erase it before giving away the machine.
Now the drive is borked. Disk utility could make no sense of it, can't reformat, it can't repartition it. And now it has completely stopped booting. I cannot even get it to boot of an external USB drive anymore (the original operation was performed while booted from a Yosemite installer drive on a USB stick).
I've reset the PRAM, reset the SMC, and just nothing. All boots are attempted from internal messed up fusion drive, which eventually ends in the "prohibitory sign".
I'm not even sure what to try at this point. Any suggestions out there?Thank you for the reply. I have since resolved the problem, although not in the most satisfactory way.
Here's what I did:
Pulled both drives out of the iMac, put them into a USB dock, and reformatted each one. Both drives appeared at this point to be fine.
Reinstalled both drive into the iMac, and started up from a USB drive. No problem.
Recreated the fusion drive from the terminal. No problem.
Now, because I am a glutton for punishment, I tried wiping the fusion drive again. This time, part way in, it kernel panicked. Luckily, I was able to reboot once again to the external drive.
At this point, the fusion drive was in the exact same messed up state as when I started. Disk Utility app could do nothing with it.
Fortunately, this time I went right to the command line, and was able to fix things up and recreate the fusion drive before anything else bad happened.
I gave up on wiping the drive for now. If I need to do so in the future, I will disable the fusion drive and try to wipe each physical drive separately.
I should note that this iMac has never given a spot of trouble before now, so I am highly suspicious of the way disk utility tries to wipe a fusion drive. I certainly won't try it again. (I don't know if it has ever kernel-panicked before in the 5 years I've owned it). -
Iam trying to erase and reformat my old iMac, it has a 1Tb hard drive in it. Error pops up and I noticed it is saying that the hard drive is 8Tb.How do I correct this?
I found another forum that had a solution. Instead of using the recovery discs that came with the mac, use snow leopard to perform the actions that I needed to do. It worked. No input/output error and the software recognized the 1Tb hard drive.
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Why can't Disk Utility wipe my old iMac in Target Disk Mode?
I want to donate my old iMac G3 with all my personal data removed.
As all my old start up disks are long gone I went online and followed advice to wipe it remotely. I connected the G3 via FireWire to my 15" MacBook Pro (late 2008, running OSX Lion 10.7.5) and restarted the G3 in Target Disk Mode. I opened Disk Utility, selected the drive (not the iMac partition), selected Erase, renamed the drive and chosen the 7 pass option. And waited...
After leaving it overnight, I awoke to find it was still preparing. I then Skipped that stage (it gave me the option) and left it for 24 hours. It was still skipping, so I had to Force Quit Disk Utility. The G3 is perfectly fine, and Disk Utility works as I just erased a memory stick as a test.
What's going on?You need to do the following:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Only use a single-pass to zero the data. Any more is overkill and will take many hours to complete. -
Good Morning,
How can I unlock the Recovery HD on my 4-5 year old iMac? Below are the steps I have gone through.
Just about when the extra extended warranty was about to run out the iMac Superdrive quit. I thought I had a few months left of extended warranty but I did not!
Last week this iMac was running slow, pages would take forever to load.
I decided to put as many of my files on an external hard drive.
Then I rebooted holding down the command and R key opening Disk Utility and secure erase my hard drive. This took a few hours.
After this was completed I got out of Disk Utilities and went above and clicked on Reinstall OS X which was OS X Mountain Lion clicked continue, clicked agree before installing OS X Mountain Lion. Now this window came up "OS X Mountain Lion select the disk where you want to install OS X.
Recovery HD 650 MB total. 155.5 ava or Macintosh HD 319.21 GB total.318.79 GB. Then I noticed that only the Macintosh HD was my install choice because the Recovery HD was paled out and I could not click on it.
When I did click on the paled out Recovery HD it would tel me that "This Disk is Locked".
Now I clicked on Macintosh HD and pressed install, now I put in my Apple ID and Password and pressed Sign In.
Then a window appeared "This item is temporarily unavailable. Try again later. Well, I must have done this at least ten times.
I phoned Apple and they told me that this Mac OS X Mountain Lion is no longer available in the Apps Store.
I should click on the Recovery HD icon and install. This is where it reads "This disk is locked."
I would really like to use this iMac.
Any ideas?
Thank you.
AbiHi Babowa,
I just rebooted holding the Command + Option + R, erased Macintosh HD.
Below is what I see on the Disk Utility after the erase.
Mount Point : /Volumes/Macintosh HD
Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Owners Enabled ; Yes
Number of Folders : 3
Capacity : 319.21 GB (319,213,174,784 Bytes)
Available : 318.79 GB (318,788,182,784)
Used : 425 MB (424,992,768 Bytes)
Number of Files : 2
I still can't go any further.
If only my internal SuperDive was working I could put in the original CD.
Please any advice and I will try to make this iMac work!
I hate to throw it out.
Abi -
Securely erasing HD and ejecting disk
I just got a 24" Intel iMac to replace my old flat panel mac (yay!).
I want to sell or donate my old iMac, so after transferring all the data, I reinstalled the system software on the old iMac, choosing to erase the HD. So far so good, but now when I start it up, I get the welcome screen which i can't get past without registering my name, address, etc. I can just shut it down, but how do I get the disc out? I'm planning to include the install disk anyway so I suppose it doesn't matter, but still it seems there must be a way. Also does reinstalling the system software with "erase" option checked SECURELY erease the data?
Thanks for replies!el modo,
"Also does reinstalling the system software with "erase" option checked SECURELY erase the data?"
Depends upon your definition of SECURELY.
1. For the truly paranoid, the only secure method is physical destruction of the drive.
2. Mac OS X has an option to do a fairly decent job of erasing data. See Disk Utility/Erase/Security Options. It takes a long time (many hours) to run, but will stop most everyone except the NSA.
3. Reinstalling the software with the erase option will prevent most people from seeing your data.
,dave -
Why does my old iMac ask for the Admin password when deleting apps?
I just bought a new 2013 iMac. I'm giving the old 2009 iMac to a friend. I installed the old OS onto it, then I updated it to Mavericks. I saw there were some programs still on it that I used to have so I went to delete them. Every time I moved the app into the trash it asked me for a password (I registered the 2009 iMac under my friend's id.) Why is it doing this?
I'm giving the old 2009 iMac to a friend.
You need to wipe your iMac securely so that none of your personal stuff remains on the system. Your friend then can update & upgrade as they see fit. Your friend should also set up a new Apple ID & password for security reasons.
Clicky click--—> Erasing disks securely
================
Start up from your install disc, go to Disk Utility and select the disk and click erase - to securely erase data click Security Options and Erase Free Space which will entirely wipe your disk, overwriting it with zeros so that no data is recoverable.
Direct PDF download----> Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard - Installation and Setup Guide which has a section that details how to restore its software. -
OS sees disk as smaller than it is; did Secure Erase succeed?
I had to return a defective 4TB (2x2TB) RAID drive to the manufacturer.
It had been hooked up to a 27" iMac i7 with 10.6.x, but I attached it to my PowerMac G5 in order to do a Secure Erase (we were having brownouts in the area and I was less worried about leaving my old G5 on for the day+ needed).
I did the 1-pass secure erase. However, I noticed that the G5 (dual 2GHz running 10.5.8) reported the drive as being 3.6 TB; the iMac reported it as being the full 4TB.
So,
1) why the apparent difference in size?
2) more importantly, did all of the data (including Social Security numbers, credit card info, online banking/investing data, etc.) securely erase, or would this mean that some area of the drive might have been missed?1000 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 = 1000000000000000
1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 1125899906842624
These terms are usually used in the world of computing to describe disk space, or data storage space, and system memory. For instance, just a few years ago we were describing hard drive space using the term Megabytes. Today, Gigabytes is the most common term being used to describe the size of a hard drive. In the not so distant future, Terabyte will be a common term. But what are they? This is where it gets quite confusing because there are at least three accepted definitions of each term.
According to the IBM Dictionary of computing, when used to describe disk storage capacity, a megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes in decimal notation. But when the term megabyte is used for real and virtual storage, and channel volume, 2 to the 20th power or 1,048,576 bytes is the appropriate notation. According to the Microsoft Press Computer Dictionary, a megabyte means either 1,000,000 bytes or 1,048,576 bytes. According to Eric S. Raymond in The New Hacker's Dictionary, a megabyte is always 1,048,576 bytes on the argument that bytes should naturally be computed in powers of two. So which definition do most people conform to?
When referring to a megabyte for disk storage, the hard drive manufacturers use the standard that a megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes. This means that when you buy an 80 Gigabyte Hard drive you will get a total of 80,000,000,000 bytes of available storage. This is where it gets confusing because Windows uses the 1,048,576 byte rule so when you look at the Windows drive properties an 80 Gigabyte drive will report a capacity of 74.56 Gigabytes and a 250 Gigabyte drive will only yield 232 Gigabytes of available storage space. Anybody confused yet? With three accepted definitions, there will always be some confusion so I will try to simplify the definitions a little.
The 1000 can be replaced with 1024 and still be correct using the other acceptable standards. Both of these standards are correct depending on what type of storage you are referring.
http://www.whatsabyte.com/
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