My 2007 Macbook Pro has suffered from a failure of its GPU and will now only boot in Single User mode.
I want to sell it on eBay for spares, but obviously I don't want a hard drive with live data on it ending up on eBay.
I know you can destroy a drive's contents with a secure erase in Disk Utility, but as I said, I can't boot into any mode that requires graphics because the GPU is dead.
How do I secure erase the machine's drive in Single User mode?
Best Answer
Normally from the command line, you would use the diskutil command with the zeroDisk, randomDisk or secureErase options to securely wipe a disk. However, I would imagine this doesn't work on the disk you've just booted from. So I suspect you'll either have to find another Mac and connect yours in target disk mode via a Firewire cable, or physically remove the drive and connect it to another Mac using a disk caddy, to wipe it the way you wish.