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Securing Pricacy when Selling

0

06Bam87

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 7, 2008
5
0
Hey,
I plan on selling my MacBook on Ebay in the near future.
I want to ensure that all of my old documents, movies, pics, etc are deleted.
Is there a way for my to do this with out reformatting my computer?
I have tried the way where you make a new user and delete the previous, but when I do this the login screen will still say my full name? even though I deleted that account/user?
maybe i did not do it correctly?
Any help is greatly appreciated
Thanks
~Brendan
 
06Bam87 said:
Hey,
I plan on selling my MacBook on Ebay in the near future.
I want to ensure that all of my old documents, movies, pics, etc are deleted.
Is there a way for my to do this with out reformatting my computer?
I have tried the way where you make a new user and delete the previous, but when I do this the login screen will still say my full name? even though I deleted that account/user?
maybe i did not do it correctly?
Any help is greatly appreciated
Thanks
~Brendan
Click to expand...

That could be the computer name, you would have to change that as well. To get rid of your stuff, you can secure erase your free space on the hard drive, which would guarantee that it was unreadable.
 
06Bam87 said:
Hey,
I plan on selling my MacBook on Ebay in the near future.
I want to ensure that all of my old documents, movies, pics, etc are deleted.
Is there a way for my to do this with out reformatting my computer?
I have tried the way where you make a new user and delete the previous, but when I do this the login screen will still say my full name? even though I deleted that account/user?
maybe i did not do it correctly?
Any help is greatly appreciated
Thanks
~Brendan
Click to expand...

pop in your disk cant remember where but there is the option somewhere to do 7 passes or if you really want to be sure 35 passes,but i think that takes 24hrs

edit think its called secure erase
 
neil321 said:
pop in your disk cant remember where but there is the option somewhere to do 7 passes or if you really want to be sure 35 passes,but i think that takes 24hrs

edit think its called secure erase
Click to expand...

35 is overkill. US Gov't standard is either 7 or 14. And 35 passes will take longer than 24 hours.
 
open up Disk Utility. Choose ERASE from the four selections in the middle section. Read the 4 choices below Erase and follow the steps. 7 passes is enough but to be on the safe side and sure choose the next one after that which maxes out at 35. But that's if you have alot of time on your hands. Good luck and I suggest 7 passes would be good enough but the choice is yours.
 
You should reformat your hard drive 5 times. it is impossible to ensure that all data is deleted for ever. Once I used Testdisk to recover a lost partition, and it was able to recover files I had deleted a year ago!!! :eek:
 
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