unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu (The Unknown User) (05/01/91)
Could someone please tell me how to nuke my hard drive? That is, what blocks I can zero so that NEITHER GS/OS NOR ProDOS can see it. When I zero the first few blocks (which I thought was a reasonable thing to do), I can get Prodos 8 so it won't realize a device is there, but when I boot the Finder, it still recognizes the partitions, and I believe even fixes the blocks I zeroed out before! -- /unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu Apple IIGS Forever! WANT ULTIMA VI //e or GS?-mail me.\ \CHEAP CDs info-mail me. McIntosh Junior: The Power to Crush the Other Kids. /
knauer@cs.uiuc.edu (Rob Knauerhase) (05/01/91)
In <15212@darkstar.ucsc.edu> unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu (The Unknown User) writes: > Could someone please tell me how to nuke my hard drive? Sure. Get a couple ounces of plutonium, and some VERY precise hammers... Then stand back - BOOM. I can see it now: cars all over California with bumper stickers that say "No Nukes - save Unknown's hard drive". :) > That is, what blocks I can zero so that NEITHER GS/OS NOR ProDOS >can see it. I think the key phrase here is "what blocks I can zero" -- the very idea of _having_ blocks to zero means you're on a formatted drive. Writing zeros to them does nothing to the block headers themselves, let alone the drive's internal partition table. > When I zero the first few blocks (which I thought was a reasonable >thing to do), I can get Prodos 8 so it won't realize a device is there, >but when I boot the Finder, it still recognizes the partitions, and >I believe even fixes the blocks I zeroed out before! The easiest way I can think of is to plug the thing into a Mac and let it do its magic (Macs hate real filesystems <grin>). I don't remember if there are any utilities for the II that will scrag your drive or not (at least not _intentionally_!). On all the AppleII-based SCSI drives I've seen, sending the SCSI low-level format code (if there is such a thing, I'm not sure) returns instantly because the drives are pre-formatted at the factory. Some of the Mac utilities (like the ones I got with my Hyperdrive) actually take 10+ minutes to low-level format the drive; I don't know if they issue a SCSI command for it or if they spell out for the drive exactly what it should do. Rob -- Robert C. Knauerhase University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign "I get my exercise acting as Dept. of Computer Science, Gigabit Study Group pallbearer for my friends knauer@cs.uiuc.edu, rck@ces.cwru.edu who exercise..." knauer@scivax.lerc.nasa.gov
mattd@Apple.COM (Matt Deatherage) (05/03/91)
In article <15212@darkstar.ucsc.edu> unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu (The Unknown User) writes: > > Could someone please tell me how to nuke my hard drive? > > That is, what blocks I can zero so that NEITHER GS/OS NOR ProDOS >can see it. > You're not being specific enough. Are you trying to nuke it so that there are no partitions whatsoever? Or are you just trying to erase the file system on one partition? To do the latter, zeroing blocks 2 through 7 should do it. To do the former, you ideally want something like Chinook's SCSI Utilities. However, you should be able to use ADU to repartition into one big partition and then format the drive. This seems to work for me. -- ============================================================================ Matt Deatherage, Developer Technical | The opinions expressed herein are Support, Apple Computer, Inc. | not those of Apple Computer, and Personal mail only, please. Thanks. | shame on you for thinking otherwise. ============================================================================