Erase before turning in?

[rasmusDoh]

Hey

Gonna turn in my MBP later this week, because of a broken hard drive.

What do i do before turning it in?

Should i clone the drive (for backup) and then format and zero it out, to remove personal informations?

 

[kenstee]

Hey

Gonna turn in my MBP later this week, because of a broken hard drive.

What do i do before turning it in?

Should i clone the drive (for backup) and then format and zero it out, to remove personal informations?

Perfect plan!

Before you do don't forget to deauthorize that computer in iTunes if you have bought/used Apple iTunes on that machine.

 

[Jaro65]

Yep. I would clone it using SuperDuper! (or something similar) and zero it out.

 

[barefeats]

If you have backed it up and there's no personal information (credit card numbers, Social Security number, etc.) stored on it, then just create a new admin user. Then login with the new admin user and use System Preferences Users panel to remove the other user you created including all the user files.

If you do have personal data you don't want a hacker to hack, then you'll want to boot from the installer discs, erase the hard drive using the security option (write zeros to the whole drive). Then reinstall OS X fresh.

 

[flyfish29]

So my MBP HD failed two weeks ago...got stuck in booting up...then after several retries it came up with ?!!! The local mac shop replaced it with a new HD (under warranty luckily!)

Could I have cloned the HD? How?

Luckily I had a backup that was only 2 months old.

 

[m85476585]

It's hard to clone or zero a broken hard drive. That's what backups and encryption are for. If the drive is broken and you need to be sure that your data is gone, the only way to be 100% sure is to physically destroy the drive. If you have encryption, your data is useless without the key (as long as the OS didn't do something dumb like store the key on the disk. Make sure you disable Safe Sleep if you use file vault).