I've got a powerbook I'm selling, and want to be sure that nothing of mine is left on the hard drive when I sell it. Does the format function when installing the the OS delete "everything"?

You can always go back and use norton and other utilities to find stuff when you do that.

85% of most people dont care or know how to do that. You can do a zero level format and that will help you to destroy it better


But the best sure fire way that I know of is to fill your hard drive up with junk like some music cds to overwrite the info and then format that so if they find anything they can only find clips of music stuff if they use utility software to find what was on your drive.

(Use lots of Country music or hard core Gansta Rap works the best for destroying data)
( Just kidding ;) )

A few low-level formats should do. Maybe be nice and install a fresh OS afterwords.

Originally posted by Eft
A few low-level formats should do. Maybe be nice and install a fresh OS afterwords.
How do I do a low-level format? How many is a "few" formats?

Boot from CD. Go into Utilities folder and do "Drive Setup". It's an option in format to do "low-level". 3-6 would be fine, but using Norton Utilities Wipe Info would be faster (2X would be good).

Originally posted by Eft
Boot from CD. Go into Utilities folder and do "Drive Setup". It's an option in format to do "low-level". 3-6 would be fine, but using Norton Utilities Wipe Info would be faster (2X would be good).

Yup that would work fine

but I still like the idea of filling up a hard drive with country music to kill it idea better ;)

I'm unable to check the low-level format box. It will only allow me to check the zero all data box. How do I get it to let me check the low-level box?

You might have one of those older IDE drives, where low-level format makes disc unusable, just do the zero-option 2-3 times.