Did I format the drive correctly???

[NSK123]

I sold my macbook yesterday and I'm pretty sure it was formated correctly

What I did was I inserted the OSX disc, rebooted and waited for the mac osx setup to start from the disc. After selecting english as my main language I launced disk utility from the task bar.

I choose to "'Erase" The entire drive which took a few seconds and I ended up with a supposedly blank 160GB drive called "Untitled"

My question is was this done correctly? I reinstalled OSX on this "Untitled" drive and after a reboot the introduction movie started rolling.

It didn't seem to have saved any of my info as it was asking to setup a new account etc... I'm just a bit confused because it takes quit a while longer to format a drive on windows and this just seemed too easy?

Has it deleted all data and freshly installed osx? or will the new buyer still find all my safari bookmarks and random files on the machine?

 

[mac2x]

The drive is already formatted correctly from the previous OS X install...all it did was erase. That can take some time, but it's typically quicker than a reformat.

If you are nervous, Disk Utility can overwrite the drive once with zeros or 7 times over with equally meaningless data. That will take some time. Of course, you'll have to reinstall again.

 

[NSK123]

Well did it erase all my data and did it install a fresh version of leopard?

Or is my data still intact on the machine? The "erase" option should remove all data right?

 

[Mighuel]

The data is still on the disk, but disk utility has marked it as free space so it's invisible to user. A new buyer has to really spend some time to dig your data up and propably your new os x install already wrote over it. At least partially. I wouldn't worry about your data except if there's something very important and personal.

 

[gnasher729]

Well did it erase all my data and did it install a fresh version of leopard?

Or is my data still intact on the machine? The "erase" option should remove all data right?

Start Disk Utility, and use "Erase Free Space". That will overwrite any data of yours. It should take ages (lets say hours). There is an option to erase everything 7 or 35 times; don't bother with that (unless you've done things that would put you into jail for life if someone found out).

 

[pcs are junk]

no u did it wrong, uve written zeros over it not erased it completely. u need to go to disk utility and under the partiton tab, go to volume scheme and click the drop down and select 1 partition, format it as mac os x extended (journaled) then name it Macintosh HD, and click partition then exit when its done and install. now uve given the person access to ur data, and now his Macintosh HD, is now called Untitled. so now u mite be in danger, call up the guy and tell him u did it wrong and say it could potentially harm his computer, then tell exactly what i told u. otherwise if u have anything on that macbook, u could get in big trouble.

 

[NSK123]

jesus, I dont' have anything important there, I had two folders with a bunch of random stuff on the desktop which I copied to an external drive I just can't remember if I deleted them or not. Anyways all I wanna know is will those two folders still be on the desktop when he creates a new user and logs onto the machine?

As long as it's gone, out of site I don't care. The guy seemed pretty retarded regards to mac and wanted to give it as a present to someone, I just want to avoid having to explain why theres a a folder filled with porn on the desktop.

 

[yg17]

Is the data on the drive? Yes
Is it accessible to an average user? No
Is the buyer going to boot up the computer for the first time and see your porn stash on the desktop? No
Is it accessible by someone who has time and money to burn on file recovery software? Yes