Gonna sell, wanna delete everything...

[embalmess]

So I have the original disks, I want to delete and reset everything, will there be ANY WAY someone can access my personal photos, documents, etc??

Paranoid Mac User 😛

 

[DeusInvictus7]

just do a reformat and youre good to go

 

[alphaod]

Boot into your Restore DVD. Select Tools-->Disk Utility on the top menu bar after boot.

Select your HDD and select the Erase tab. Click the 'Security Options' button and select Zero Out. Okay and then click 'Erase'.

After it's done, exit Disk Utility and reinstall the OS.

 

[SDLSteve]

Or use secure empty trash. I tried the reformat but it didn't work for who knows why so I dumped everything in the trash and did it secure. It took almost 12 hours though. Remember to flush all of the cookies and passwords off the web browsers

 

[alphaod]

Or use secure empty trash. I tried the reformat but it didn't work for who knows why so I dumped everything in the trash and did it secure. It took almost 12 hours though. Remember to flush all of the cookies and passwords off the web browsers

Erase takes about 2 hours on my drive, so it will be a lot shorter on a smaller capacity HDD.

 

[Milk*is*tasty]

Does is low-level the entire disk multiple times though?

Not that it's that relevant (unless you have really really sensitive stuff on your drive), but the only way to really erase something is to write over every single sector with gibberish multiple times.

 

[Cave Man]

Yes, you can do erase with multiple passes of zeros. Of course, it'll take longer, too.

 

[mosx]

Use the 7 pass wipe option in Disk Utility when booting from the original discs.

That uses DOD standards to wipe the disc. Yeah it'll take overnight to do it, but it'll be next to impossible for nearly anyone to recover any sort of data. Any data that would be recoverable would be fragments.

Just zeroing out the drive will leave it wide open to data recovery. 7 pass will make it next to impossible and 35 pass WILL make it impossible.

 

[seashellz]

actually a quick erase and reformat (make 2 partitions, change back to one)will do-take 5 minutes-or just reinstall OS X
--
I think the DOD erases once and then cuts the HD into halves, then quarters with a bandsaw then tosses into incinerator-makes it pretty hard to retrieve data when they melt significant parts of the the HD, rather than the myth of them erasing it 100 times of whatever


but dont quote me

 

[mosx]

actually a quick erase and reformat (make 2 partitions, change back to one)will do-take 5 minutes-or just reinstall OS X
--
I think the DOD erases once and then cuts the HD into halves, then quarters with a bandsaw then tosses into incinerator-makes it pretty hard to retrieve data when they melt significant parts of the the HD, rather than the myth of them erasing it 100 times of whatever


but dont quote me

DOD uses 7 pass wipes that write out 1s, then 0s, and alternate, then random. The only data thats ever recoverable takes (what seems like) forever to recover and its never anything usable.

The method you're suggesting doesn't actually erase anything. It just marks data as free space. Data is easily recovered that way. Data can still be recovered when its been written over 3 or so times. The 7 pass method will make it next to impossible to recover data.

 

[embalmess]

Sold it today to a nice college student!

I just reinstalled with the disks and selected "erase everything" under options button. When the dude picked up the computer, I watched him register it like it was brand new (just to make sure it was all working properly.) He seemed like such a nice kid anyway, so no worries 😛