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Wiping Personal Information Before Selling

F

Frost17

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 17, 2011
149
22
I own an iMac that I'm looking to sell, it originally had Leopard on it and now I'm running Mountain Lion. I want all of my personal information off it, what is the best way to do so?

Should I just put in the Snow Leopard disc and reset it like that or is there an easier way that I can still have the current OS with all of the info off it?
 
Since OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion will be bound to your Apple account, it is better to do a clean install of either OS and not use the Apple ID with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion during the installation, if you have the installers of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion still stored somewhere.

Then when you format the HDD during the clean install, go to Disk Utility started from the installer, then select your HDD, select the ERASE tab, and in the lower third there is a SECURITY OPTIONS button, click on that, then select ZERO OUT and so on.
That procedure will probably take an hour or longer, depending on the size of your HDD.

Mac 101: Preparing your old Mac for sale or recycling



 
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