02-06-2010, 06:29 PM

Guys,

1) I have an eMac running OS X 10.4 which I understand is tiger. When I looked at my disks all I could find are 10.3 disks that say Panther. I looked everywhere in my house and I could not find any Tiger disks. I don't remember how I got from 10.3 to 10.4. I don't think this can be done via a regular software update. Anyone know how I may have gone to 10.4 from 10.3?

2) I am planning on donating this eMac, but am worried about personal info that could be undeleted. If I install 10.3 over my 10.4 does it wipe the hard drive clean?

3) How easy is it to find and look into deleted files? Are there any free utilities out there I can use?

4)Is Panther still a usable OS? I'd rather not donate with a useless OS.

thanks

02-06-2010, 07:27 PM

Forget or not, you must have some time or other installed Tiger over Panther. But that doesn't matter....

What you need to do is overwrite or erase any free space on that hard drive before donating the machine. In other words, all your personal data which has been removed needs to be overwritten or erased. You don't need to reinstall Panther, although you should include the Panther disks when you donate the machine.

See the following thread from the "Hints" forum and see if that helps.

LINK

Regards.

02-07-2010, 01:58 PM

Well, Panther is not useless, but it will have more and more limitations as new software is introduced. Most computer users are casual users and would have no idea how to resurrect deleted info that is still on the hard drive. But, you should still wipe the drive and reinstall Panther since you don't know where it will end up one day.

02-07-2010, 02:14 PM

socratic - chances are when you got the computer someone had put Tiger on it and gave you the original Panther Install disks. Some off the older hardware runs quite nicely on Panther so don't sweat it, as tomacsh says depends on what it will be used for.

02-07-2010, 05:02 PM

guys. i did this Erase function in Disk Utility. I did the 7X option, but half way thru I get a message that says I am out of memory. The only other app that i have running at the time is Finder. I have at least 10gig free on the HD. Any thoughts?

thanks..

02-07-2010, 06:16 PM

Originally Posted by socratic

guys. i did this Erase function in Disk Utility. I did the 7X option, but half way thru I get a message that says I am out of memory. The only other app that i have running at the time is Finder. I have at least 10gig free on the HD. Any thoughts?

thanks..

Yes...I really don't think you need to do the 7x option...do the single pass erase.

- Nick