09-03-2006, 03:31 PM

So I have an iBook that has completely died upon me (logic board death = lots of cash to repair.) I am considering selling it for parts...however, I have a problem. If I do this, then I will be selling my current iBook hard drive with all my personal information on it. Don't get me wrong...I do NOT have a bunch of illegal shennanigans on it! I have tax info and a bunch of other personal info that I would rather not have a stranger access.

And if I do have a couple of Jenna Jameson pictures on it, then my brother put those on that weekend I was away.

No seriously, how do I delete this when I can't even turn on the mac? Any way of connecting it via firewire to a PC somehow? Or another mac? Appreciate any input.

Sticky Dee :confused:

09-03-2006, 03:45 PM

If it will switch on, you can put it into firewire target mode by holding down the 'T' key at boot up.

Even if a windows machine won't let you access any data on the drive, you should be able to reformat it to FAT32 which will destroy the data.

09-03-2006, 04:22 PM

Originally Posted by Aptmunich

If it will switch on, you can put it into firewire target mode by holding down the 'T' key at boot up.

Even if a windows machine won't let you access any data on the drive, you should be able to reformat it to FAT32 which will destroy the data.

Oh, you lovely genius, you! For some reason, could not reformat it to FAT32, only gave me the option of NTFS (which, for all I know, could be exactly the same) but I think it did the job. REALLY appreciate this - now may actually have it repaired/sold.

Thanks again,

Sticky

09-03-2006, 04:54 PM

Oh yeah, I think the built-in formatting app that Windows has is limited to 32GB for FAT32 partitions.

But either way the data should be destroyed and if someone can get it fixed they can just reformat it to HFS+ and install OS X again.