Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Best practice of wiping HD clean before sale?

B

BlakeBrattina

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 10, 2011
542
61
Bay City, MI
Hi all,

Had a question about the best and easiest way to wipe my computer clean before selling it. Any recommendations? I always read that fully taking the HD out and replacing it with a new one is best, but I simply do not want to go to that drastic of a measure.

Look forward to the responses.
 
Start from the install medium (DVD or recovery partition), open Disk Utility from the Utilities Menu*, select the HDD you want to wipe, go to the Partitions tab, select "1 Partition" from the scheme dropdown menu, press the OPTION button and select ZERO OUT**.
A bit more detailed guide can be found here:

* Guide on how to use Disk Utility from the restore / installation DVD.

** DiskWiping – One Pass is Enough
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Start from the install medium (DVD or recovery partition), open Disk Utility from the Utilities Menu*, select the HDD you want to wipe, go to the Partitions tab, select "1 Partition" from the scheme dropdown menu, press the OPTION button and select ZERO OUT**.
A bit more detailed guide can be found here:
[/URL]
Click to expand...

So here is the problem I keep running into, it seems that I am missing a few areas that are needed to partition this, unless of course I am doing it wrong which is a high possibility. Any ideas?

15xco3.png
 
BlakeBrattina said:
So here is the problem I keep running into, it seems that I am missing a few areas that are needed to partition this, unless of course I am doing it wrong which is a high possibility. Any ideas?

Image
Click to expand...

As said before, you have to boot into the install medium, in your case the Recovery Partition, as you cannot wipe the volume you are currently booting from.

As you probably do not have a bootable install medium made from the installer, booting into Recovery Mode (CMD+R during startup)* and then selecting Utilities from the Utilities Menu.

Is that understandable?


* No Mac coming with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion or OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has physical restore media included.

OS X: About OS X Recovery

If you want to make a bootable installation medium, you can follow these steps:
​
 
That does make a ton of sense - Now my last hurdle is that it will not allow me to partition it due to me receiving a "Could not unmount disk"
 
BlakeBrattina said:
That does make a ton of sense - Now my last hurdle is that it will not allow me to partition it due to me receiving a "Could not unmount disk"
Click to expand...

Where does it say that? Are you booted from the recovery partition? If so, you do not need to go via the Partitions tab, just select Macintosh HD on the left, go to the ERASE tab and select ZERO OUT there after pressing the OPTIONS button.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back