[SheerKhan]

the short of it:

i know i could look it up via search engine, but i figured that would take longer and be more difficult than asking all the mac gurus here

my bf recently purchased a g4 15" (the 867MHz)

he was asking me how to erase all of the previous owner's info and personal stuff and make him the admin (basically, how do you bring the computer to the original condition: blank)

i know that you can erase the hd, but the info will still be kept there, accesible with the right software. he doesn't want that. isn't there a way to erase the hd completely? (something about erasing 7-15 times is what i've heard)

thanks in advance for the help (and patience for a question that i'm sure has been asked a million times)

[Chuckit]

Jaguar has an option to overwrite the drive with zeroes, which would technically amount to erasing the drive. It is still possible to get past this and see old data, though.

To "securely" erase a drive, you have to overwrite it with random data several times. I think there is software to do this on Jaguar, but if you're going to be throwing your money at the problem, you may as well pick up Panther, which has the option built into Disk Utility.

On the other hand, I can't think of any good reason at all why your boyfriend should be worried about Russian spies seeing what the other guy used to have on there. If the previous owner didn't see fit to protect himself, why bother?

[SheerKhan]

yeah, i found out that norton utilities (which i already have) will securely erase the hd.

planning on getting panther, just waiting until after christmas, cus you just never know