I am erasing my mac because I will be selling it. However I decided to have it write random data on the disk and it is taking FOREVER. is there any way to stop this and then redo it so I can just have it zero all data? I went to disk utility>quit, and it said that quitting could damage the disk leaving it unusable... any help out there?
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Help! doing an erase and install and want to quit the process...
- Thread starter jmufellow
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any help?? I looked this up on the apple support forums and someone explained the issue well. Here's what he wrote:
"I made the mistake of doing the 8x random number zeroing out, and it's taking FOREVER. When I try to quit disk utility, I get a warning that says "Disk Utility still has some operations in progress. Quitting in the middle of some operations can leave a disk non-operational. Are you sure you want to quit?"
Is this one of these operations I shouldn't quit? Can I just restart from the install disk and try it again or will quitting partway damage the hard drive?"
This is my exact situation. Unfortunately no one was able to help him. Anyone here know? THANKS!
"I made the mistake of doing the 8x random number zeroing out, and it's taking FOREVER. When I try to quit disk utility, I get a warning that says "Disk Utility still has some operations in progress. Quitting in the middle of some operations can leave a disk non-operational. Are you sure you want to quit?"
Is this one of these operations I shouldn't quit? Can I just restart from the install disk and try it again or will quitting partway damage the hard drive?"
This is my exact situation. Unfortunately no one was able to help him. Anyone here know? THANKS!
What happened...
I hit the one week mark and it was still "preparing the disk" for a random write! Ridiculous! Anyway I went ahead and quit the process and it didn't kill my disk, so I would advise anyone to not turn on that option unless they absolutely have to, and that quitting in the middle of it didn't hurt my computer. Just thought I'd report on what happened so if anyone else has this problem, they will know..
I hit the one week mark and it was still "preparing the disk" for a random write! Ridiculous! Anyway I went ahead and quit the process and it didn't kill my disk, so I would advise anyone to not turn on that option unless they absolutely have to, and that quitting in the middle of it didn't hurt my computer. Just thought I'd report on what happened so if anyone else has this problem, they will know..
jmufellow said:I hit the one week mark and it was still "preparing the disk" for a random write! Ridiculous! Anyway I went ahead and quit the process and it didn't kill my disk, so I would advise anyone to not turn on that option unless they absolutely have to, and that quitting in the middle of it didn't hurt my computer. Just thought I'd report on what happened so if anyone else has this problem, they will know..
i would've said wait it out, as you "were going to be selling it" but a week is a long time! i guess it's lucky that you quit while it was prepping and not while it was writing...