: Hey, sorry for the lateness of this reply. I already have OS X; I have OS 9
: on my computer as well. I'm basically trying to erase everything on the
: drive since I'm selling my computer. (I already have a G5 lined up for
: replacement however). So I'm wondering if I would have to format 9 and X
: seperately, or could I do it in one fell swoop?
I'm jealous of your new G5. Do you want to leave the new user a fully operational hard drive with OS 9 and OS X both installed, or do you just want to give them a bootable drive? Also, do you want to insure that your personal stuff is unrecoverable? The simplest thing you can do overall is to simply use the installation disk(s) that came with your computer - it will restore your hard drive to its original install condition, which the new user can then upgrade at their choosing. Now if you're just talking about how to format the hard drive, the OS X Drive Utility on the OS X installer disk will do this, and it has a checkbox for OS 9 compatibility. To do this, boot off the installer disk but when the installer comes on, select Drive Utility from the Installer menu instead. Be advised, however, that this will not erase your hard drive's contents - it will merely delet the volume info, but an ordinary disk editor will still be able to recover much of what you have. I can't remember if Drive Utility has an option to overwrite the drive instead, but ther are numerous utilities that will do this. Once you have reinstalled your OS(s), simply use one of these to securely erase your hard drives free space - it will overwrite it with zeros. The FBI could still recover your data, but mere mortals couldn't.
