[MacinMA]

I'm getting rid of my eMac. I perfromed an 8 pass erase on the disk, the next phase, says "Creating Partition Map". It has been like this for 4 days! The status bar has not moved but it is twirling, the beachball is also twirling.

I need know what will happen if I kill the power to the computer at this point?

Or what else can I do?
I'm assuming that data has already been erased at this point.
I just wanted to erase the disk and reinstall the OS to give to a friend.
I'm wondering if I shut down (if it lets me) what will happen when I reboot or should I just try to run the installer.

Can anyone help me?

It's running 10.3.9

[CharlesS]

Yeah, I'd guess that if it's creating the partition map, it's probably already done the 7-way wipe. However, if it's failing during a reformat, you may have a bad hard drive.

[turtle777]

8 pass erase is an absolute waste of time.

-t

[jmiddel]

You can definitely turn the power off, that won't hurt anything. Insert the OS disk, then start up holding the C key to start up from the install disk, then run Disk Utility to format the HD and then re-install the OS.