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How to Wipe an HD to sell MBA

R

rimmi2002

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 6, 2011
93
0
Hi I'm selling my Mac book air and want to know how to securely wipe my SSD. Its 128 gb and the main HD.

When I tried to boot from a USB with Mavericks on it to do a fresh install it did not give me the option for a secure erase to do 7 pass erase. Is there another way of doing this on the MBA SSD? Thanks.
 
Secure erase is blocked on flash drives as it wears down the drive.

Do this instead. Go to System Prefs and in the security pane turn on Filevault encryption. Wait for it to finish.

Now do a command-option-r boot to Internet recovery. When the recovery screen starts select Disk Utility then select the drive name at the very top like Toshiba 128GB or whatever. Then erase the entire drive to Mac OS Extended. This will erase the encrypted partition and nobody will be able to get that data back.

Now quit Disk Utility and click reinstall OS. This will download the OS version that came with your machine from Apple's servers.

Once the install is done and the setup process starts just do a command-q to quit it and shutdown.
 
Weaselboy said:
Secure erase is blocked on flash drives as it wears down the drive.

Do this instead. Go to System Prefs and in the security pane turn on Filevault encryption. Wait for it to finish.

Now do a command-option-r boot to Internet recovery. When the recovery screen starts select Disk Utility then select the drive name at the very top like Toshiba 128GB or whatever. Then erase the entire drive to Mac OS Extended. This will erase the encrypted partition and nobody will be able to get that data back.

Now quit Disk Utility and click reinstall OS. This will download the OS version that came with your machine from Apple's servers.

Once the install is done and the setup process starts just do a command-q to quit it and shutdown.
Click to expand...

Very nice advice..! i think it prudent to have FV2 running period.. just in case :D
 
Weaselboy said:
I agree. First thing I do on every new Mac I setup. That and an EFI password nets anybody that steals my MacBook a nice paperweight. :D
Click to expand...

haha, i just did all the EFI passes on my machines... if the thieves want to ******* me i say ******* them!

Btw FV2 with an SSD almost no different in speed, absolutely amazing, it wasn't that long ago that FV would make you damn thing run sooooo sloooow :(
 
Hi Thanks for the replies. My main issue lies in the the data that is in the empty space right now (past deleted files). If I encrypt and delete it will it only take care of the present data or will it encrypt the whole HD?
 
rimmi2002 said:
Hi Thanks for the replies. My main issue lies in the the data that is in the empty space right now (past deleted files). If I encrypt and delete it will it only take care of the present data or will it encrypt the whole HD?
Click to expand...

AFAIK it encrypts the whole drive.. but not 100% on that.
 
rimmi2002 said:
Hi Thanks for the replies. My main issue lies in the the data that is in the empty space right now (past deleted files). If I encrypt and delete it will it only take care of the present data or will it encrypt the whole HD?
Click to expand...

It turns the entire partition in an encrypted core storage volume, so you are good.

After you turn Filevault on run the Terminal command "diskutil list" and you will see the core storage volume equal in size to Macintosh HD.
 
rimmi2002 said:
it did not give me the option for a secure erase to do 7 pass erase. Is there another way of doing this on the MBA SSD? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Did you go to Disk Utility?

Even still, you don't need to do a 7 pass erase. A single pass is just as effective.
 
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