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Recovering files

D

domcole

macrumors regular
Original poster
I am selling my MacBook tomorrow.

I do not have the OS CD I need to erase all content, however I have done that manually by just dragging all of my old files to the trash and permanently deleting them.



Do you think this should be sufficient?




Thanks
 
When you're done deleting all you stuff, use Disk Utility to erase the free space with writing zeroes all over the free space, which makes it almost impossible to recover your data.

Simply emptying the Trash will not remove your data, thus it i recoverable, unless it is overwritten by new files or by the erase free space option in Disk Utility with Zero Out Data selected.

http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/zero-out-free-disk-space.html

diskutility04.jpg
 
Right, the progress bare tells me it's basically finished but I got the error message "start up disk is full, delete some files".

I don't understand, doing this whole process has created space if anything. I have 210GB of HDD space left.



Any ideas?



Thanks
 
domcole said:
Right, the progress bare tells me it's basically finished but I got the error message "start up disk is full, delete some files".

I don't understand, doing this whole process has created space if anything. I have 210GB of HDD space left.



Any ideas?



Thanks
Click to expand...

During the process a "You are running low on disk space" warning may pop up, just click OK on this and ignore it. That message is suppose to pop up. Disk Utility zeros out the free disk space by simply making a giant file that is nothing but zeros.
from http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/zero-out-free-disk-space.html
from
spinnerlys said:
When you're done deleting all you stuff, use Disk Utility to erase the free space with writing zeroes all over the free space, which makes it almost impossible to recover your data.

Simply emptying the Trash will not remove your data, thus it i recoverable, unless it is overwritten by new files or by the erase free space option in Disk Utility with Zero Out Data selected.

http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/zero-out-free-disk-space.html

diskutility04.jpg
Click to expand...
 
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