How do I "wipe" a hard drive?

[Paqman]

Paqman, can I just use gparted to do that?

For quickly formatting it? Sure.

[wolfen69]

Deleting the partition is super simple to RESTORE. It's not what you want to do if you don't want someone getting your old data.

I should add that after a partition is deleted, I always reinstall an OS before giving it to someone. Not worried.

[srs5694]

Paqman, can I just use gparted to do that?

Personally, yes, I would just delete the partition using gparted and be done with it. I highly doubt anyone is going to use specialized software to get at your files. But if you really feel you must securely delete, one pass will be good enough.

My interpretation is that Ranger_Joe has already decided to use shred on the disk, and only wants to create a partition table as a courtesy to the new owner. If so, GParted can do the job, although since the computer is being sold for parts, leaving it completely unpartitioned is perfectly reasonable. In fact, partitioning a "for-parts" disk may be inadvisable, since there are at least three types of partition tables that a new owner might want to create on it (APM, MBR, and GPT), and if you create the wrong type it might actually become harder for the new owner to properly create the right type. In particular, some tools don't completely wipe GPT or APM data when converting to MBR, which can lead to some programs getting confused and showing incorrect partition data.

If you do want to create a new partition table, I recommend creating the native type for the machine. For an older (PowerPC or 680x0) Mac, this would be APM. For a newer (Intel-based) Mac, it would be GPT. When using GParted, you've got to click the "Advanced" item in the dialog box when creating a partition table to be able to select the type; if you don't do this, it'll create an MBR partition table.