How to reformat MBP to sell?

[mdwsta4]

I've seen a handful of tutorials on how to erase all your data when selling your computer, but I'm running into two issues. 1. I can't find my Snow Leopard disc 2. When I'm in Disc Utility, select the hard drive, and click on the 'erase' tab, everything is grayed out.

Lil help please? Thank you!

 

[alust2013]

Basically, you need to find your disk to do it. Apple will sell you a new one for a fairly small fee.

 

[anotherdave]

Use the disk you have

I've seen a handful of tutorials on how to erase all your data when selling your computer, but I'm running into two issues. 1. I can't find my Snow Leopard disc 2. When I'm in Disc Utility, select the hard drive, and click on the 'erase' tab, everything is grayed out.

Lil help please? Thank you!

There is only one disk.

Start up from the disk, you'll pick a language, but before clicking the 'install' button, chose 'utilities' from the menu at the top of the screen, and 'disk utility' from the options given.

 

[mdwsta4]

realized I could use the disc that came with my new computer.

I restart my computer, hold down 'C' and wait for it to prompt me for my language. I select english and a window pops up that tells me Mac OS X can't be installed on this computer. Then prompts me to either restart or restore from a backup. The Utilities option at the top of the screen is grayed out.

 

[mdwsta4]

actually, after doing a little googling, it turns out I can't use the new disc and that's why I'm getting the error. Used the original install disc and am erasing everything now.

I suppose the new question is that my machine is from 2007 and it is an older version of OS X. I was running Snow Leopard. How do I get that back on the old machine prior to selling it?

 

[RKpro]

I had an entire blog post on the matter recently.

Basically, the Disk Utility in Mac OS X that runs while your computer is ON can only securely erase the free space. This should make most of your deleted files unrecoverable. However it's far from secure because you likely left other files behind. It can't securely wipe the whole drive while the OS is running.

If you're selling your computer, the only way to secure your files is to zero out the disk several times and do a fresh install.

I suppose you can find some Linux distributions online that you can use to zero out your disk, but you still need an OS X Install disk for the fresh install.

So basically, try to find your Snow Leopard disk. Maybe borrow one from a friend? Or buy a retail one from apple, it's like $30 isn't it?