I hit "skip" during 7 pass erase- CRAP! HELP!

hey guys
i was erasing my empty space so that i could sell my imac. i chose the 7 pass option, which was stupid and i realize that now. then i found out, i did not need to do it on the empty space but on the full security options to do the whole machine. therefore, i hit the "skip" button and now it is just hung and appearing to not do anything.
what have I done? how long is it going to take to "skip?" if i could just start all over and choose the single pass mode that is what i would do. i feel pretty dang sure it would be stupid to power off the machine while it is just hung since it says that by force quitting the process could cause issues.
Please help! My new buyer was supposed to be coming to get the mac tomorrow afternoon. I could just leave it in this "skipping" mode if I new what was going on and how long it was going to take!
help please oh please
jared

Restart it, it should be ok. My old iMac did this, and I restarted the erase process with no issues.

BTW, It takes ages!

so you think just power it off? once i power it off i can just restart the erase process (single pass this time of course) and then reinstall OS X from the disc at that point?

jrod81 said:

so you think just power it off? once i power it off i can just restart the erase process (single pass this time of course) and then reinstall OS X from the disc at that point?

Click to expand...

Yes, it won't be a problem as the new overpass will erase anything left from what you were doing, and you will have a nice clean HD to accept a new install.