Sorry I am moving forum. I am looking for a way to securely erase all the data in the SSD of the rMBP provided by my employer. What is the best way to do it besides setting up a new account with admin right and then delete my current account from there and then reformat? Does this method erase all the data in the ssd so that they cannot be retrieved even by IT?
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How to securly erase all data in SSD of rMBP?
- Thread starter hajime
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It depends upon your definition of "securely". Seriously.
With SSDs there may always be some data left than can in theory be accessed by a determined person.
If your employer is the NSA or CIA or Shin Bet you need to destroy the drive physically.
If your employer is an ordinary company then just do a one pass erase writing zeroes with disk utility since there is literally no additionally benefit doing more with an SSD.
With SSDs there may always be some data left than can in theory be accessed by a determined person.
If your employer is the NSA or CIA or Shin Bet you need to destroy the drive physically.
If your employer is an ordinary company then just do a one pass erase writing zeroes with disk utility since there is literally no additionally benefit doing more with an SSD.
What if you just delete the data you do not want to be recovered, if it is just documents and not applications or other system related files, by moving them to the TRASH and then SECURE EMPTY TRASH via the Finder menu or use ERASE FREE SPACE in Disk Utility?
Could that work for you?
Could that work for you?
The normal "secure erase" option in Disk Util will be greyed out since you have a flash storage device and secure erase degrades the drive.
Do this instead... go into the Security and Privacy pane of System Preferences and turn on Filevault encryption than way for the encryption to complete. Then turn off the Mac.
Now turn it on while holding the command-option-r keys all three at once. You will see a spinning wheel while the recovery tool downloads. It will look like this.
From this screen start Disk Utility and select the drive brand name at the very top of the left column above Macintosh HD. Then go to the erase tab and format the entire disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Then quite Disk Util and click reinstall OS and the ~5GB OS will download and install. This will give you a drive with nothing on it except the OS that came with the machine.
The idea is that you have erased an encrypted core storage volume and even if someone managed to unerase some of it, it would still be encrypted.
The normal "secure erase" option in Disk Util will be greyed out since you have a flash storage device and secure erase degrades the drive.
Do this instead... go into the Security and Privacy pane of System Preferences and turn on Filevault encryption than way for the encryption to complete. Then turn off the Mac.
Now turn it on while holding the command-option-r keys all three at once. You will see a spinning wheel while the recovery tool downloads. It will look like this.
![Xm7rMyl.png]()
From this screen start Disk Utility and select the drive brand name at the very top of the left column above Macintosh HD. Then go to the erase tab and format the entire disk to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).
Then quite Disk Util and click reinstall OS and the ~5GB OS will download and install. This will give you a drive with nothing on it except the OS that came with the machine.
The idea is that you have erased an encrypted core storage volume and even if someone managed to unerase some of it, it would still be encrypted.
Thanks. Before I do this, will it be better if I also create another admin account and delete the account I use all the time? By combining these two methods, can they find a way to retrieve the data?
My evil boss worked for a government on forensic-related research. I don't want him to have access to the data.
That would sure not hurt, but I have not read of anybody able to crack FV encryption.
Repeat the process (total of 2 times, with different keys). Overwriting with encrypted data once, then overwriting that again with data encrypted under a different key is about as close as you can get to a secure-erase of an SSD.
If you're more paranoid, repeat it more times.
Or just remove the SSD and smash it into tiny little pieces.