How to erase a system disk on iMac or MacBook?

When attempting to erase the internal system disk on a Mac using Active@ KillDisk, the process may fail with multiple errors and quit unexpectedly — even if the machine was booted from an external drive. This typically happens because System Integrity Protection (SIP), a macOS security feature, blocks low-level write access to the system disk by default.

To successfully erase an internal system disk on an Apple system, you need to disable System Integrity Protection first.

Important:

Disabling SIP removes a macOS security layer that protects system files from modification. Only disable it temporarily, for the purpose of erasing the disk, and re-enable it afterward if the machine will continue to be used.

See How to turn off System Integrity Protection in macOS? for step-by-step instructions.