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Completely Wiping SSD on rMBP

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StockDC2

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 16, 2011
212
12
Hello, I am looking to sell my rMBP 15" and am curious how I would go about completely wiping the drive (similar to zeroing out a HDD). I have my new rMBP and was thinking of connecting the 2 using a ThunderBolt cable but am not sure if that would work. I have a USB drive with Yosemite on it but am not sure if I could completely wipe my primary partition and recovery using it. If there isn't a solution to wipe the drive completely, I may have no choice but to keep my SSD and part out the system (which I want to avoid).

Thanks for the help!
 
redheeler

redheeler

macrumors G3
Oct 17, 2014
8,423
8,845
Colorado, USA
Boot into Recovery (hold down Command-R after the startup chime) and use Disk Utility to secure erase Macintosh HD. Afterward you can perform a clean OS install from there as well.

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Wait, why would you want to wipe Recovery?
 
S

StockDC2

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 16, 2011
212
12
It is my understanding that the recovery partition still retains the user's information such as their iCloud credentials. Not sure how I feel about that since I back up my messages and pictures. If I've been misinformed, then deleting the recovery partition would not be necessary.
 
Gav2k

Gav2k

macrumors G3
Jul 24, 2009
9,216
1,608
StockDC2 said:
It is my understanding that the recovery partition still retains the user's information such as their iCloud credentials. Not sure how I feel about that since I back up my messages and pictures. If I've been misinformed, then deleting the recovery partition would not be necessary.
Click to expand...

The recovery partition contains the os installer not your files. It does not need wiping.
 
Last edited:
Y

yjchua95

macrumors 604
Apr 23, 2011
6,725
233
GVA, KUL, MEL (current), ZQN
StockDC2 said:
It is my understanding that the recovery partition still retains the user's information such as their iCloud credentials. Not sure how I feel about that since I back up my messages and pictures. If I've been misinformed, then deleting the recovery partition would not be necessary.
Click to expand...

The Recovery partition doesn't contain anything other than some basic utilities such as Time Machine restore, downloading OS X from the Internet, Disk Utility, Terminal and the EFI Firmware Password Utility.

It doesn't store any iCloud credentials. That's why you've to enter your credentials manually when trying to re-download OS X from the Recovery partition, so that it can verify that you've purchased OS X.

I always keep a bootable USB stick in the event I need to reinstall OS X. It saves me the time from having to re-download the whole thing.
 
S

StockDC2

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 16, 2011
212
12
Sounds great. Thanks for your guys' responses. I'll just do a reformat using my USB drive.
 
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