Clearing personal data

[drake]

I'm selling my Macbooks, I'm wondering how I go about clearing out all my personal information? Would rather not do a full reinstall.

 

[66217]

If you have some important information the best would be making a clean install. Why risk it?😉

 

[CanadaRAM]

Erase and install.

1) it is not legal to sell the machine with commercial software left 'preinstalled' on the hard drive, unless you are also providing the original CDs, serial numbers and transfer of license to the customer.

2) You need to provide the OSX CDs to the customer with the machine, so it's easy to boot from the CD and do the erase and install.

 

[drake]

No commerical software on the computer, only OSX and freebie stuff. This was my secondary computer so it was only used for internet. I'm still debating if I should sell it or not, other than some weird uneveness in the display (as I pointed out in another thread) its perfect, and the new model isn't that much of an upgrade. Might just break down and get Applecare and wait.

 

[1020]

I'm still debating if I should sell it or not...

If you do sell it and are worried someone might try to recover your data, you can always use Disk Utility (from your install disk) to zero out your hard drive.