Best way to prepare a used mac.

[dogbone]

I've just bought a late model emac for a friend that I'm going to set up (the computer not the friend). I was wondering if I should do any HD maintainance before I do a clean install of the OS? Should I do a hard drive security erase or something else that checks for bad blocks. I'm hoping to start it off as if it were new.

 

[yetanotherdave]

Unless you are particularly worried about any of the data on the drive an erase and install should suffice.

 

[BigPrince]

boot and nuke with DOD standards.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darik's_Boot_and_Nuke


never done it on a mac though

 

[theISHkid]

If you're really nervous you could do a (I think it's a) 7x erase. You know where it writes over everything seven times to clean it all out.

 

[dogbone]

Wow, that's pretty intense. I'm not looking particularly to eradicate traces of data, I'm just hoping to do any sort of maintainance tasks that can only be done during a clean install.

 

[synth3tik]

You can run a program such as Tech Tool Pro if you have it. That will check all system components as well as the Drives. For the most part you will be fine just doing a clean install, unless you have really sensitive information on the computer that a friend should not even see. When I sell a computer I usually just to the Zero data wipe. It just writes all sectors on the HD with a 0. It;s only a one time pass, but I feel safe with it, and the 7 time erase takes hours upon hours depending on the machine, an eMac would take fo-eva

 

[theISHkid]

I know the 7x thing takes a while... We just did it on a new imac and it was about 8 hours.