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How to clear personal data, selling Macbook
- Thread starter rm2092
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So, you're selling it without the install discs?
BTW, once you erase everything, how are you going to reinstall OS X?
Let me know if you need more specific information than this.
Go into System Preferences and click on Accounts. Click the lock to make changes and then enter your password and click OK. Click the plus button to create a new account and select Administrator from the menu when entering the new account information. Once this is done log out of your account and into the new one you created. At that point you can go back into accounts and remove your account by highlighting it and clicking the minus button. You can choose the option here to delete the home folder, which will delete all of your files. But if you want to be more secure choose the "Do Not Change Home Folder" option. Then you can drag your user folder to the trash and do a Secure Empty Trash. This way the new owner could not recover any of your deleted files. Do that if you have any sensitive information on the computer and want the added security.
Go into System Preferences and click on Accounts. Click the lock to make changes and then enter your password and click OK. Click the plus button to create a new account and select Administrator from the menu when entering the new account information. Once this is done log out of your account and into the new one you created. At that point you can go back into accounts and remove your account by highlighting it and clicking the minus button. You can choose the option here to delete the home folder, which will delete all of your files. But if you want to be more secure choose the "Do Not Change Home Folder" option. Then you can drag your user folder to the trash and do a Secure Empty Trash. This way the new owner could not recover any of your deleted files. Do that if you have any sensitive information on the computer and want the added security.
for itunes you need to log into the itunes store and and deauthorize the computer before you erase your user account
The best way to guarantee that all your personal data is removed is to write-zero the drive and then reinstall the OS, which requires the install discs.
As for the iTunes stuff, you'll want to make sure you have a backup of your iTunes library before you actually remove it. But you already have a backup, don't you?
