iMac Drive Wipe - El Capitan

[Freis968]

I bought a new 5k iMac and need to take my old iMac [Late 2013] in for the HD replacement recall.

I cannot find a way to wipe out my 3TB fusion drive as I was able to with old version of Disk Utility. I was able to wipe the HD and then use Recovery to reinstall the OS last time I sold my last iMac.

Also, I have to enter my username and password when reinstalling El Capitan.

My main concern is wiping the 3TB hard drive, I would feel better making sure the contents of the drive are ANNIHILATED first.

I assume Apple will destroy the drive and then send back to Seagate for credit but would prefer the aforementioned safeguard just in case.

 

[rigormortis]

use filevault and don't give them the password or recovery key, and do a simple erase. its the best thing you can do when you cant do a secure wipe , other then the physical destruction of the ssd module. you can always find a utility and do 4096 i guess!


if you install the OS X and turn it off when it says reboot ?? before you enter a user name and password ? it will say welcome to os x !

 

[DavidDoyle]

Can you boot from El Capitan install media and get to a Terminal from the install screens? That would then enable you to use Terminal commands to achieve a secure wipe:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1139688/erasefreespace.html

Omit the 'freespace' parameter and you wipe the entire drive.

(Update) Just tested and yes you can get to 'Terminal' under 'Utilities' in the install screen.

 

[Freis968]

Can you boot from El Capitan install media and get to a Terminal from the install screens? That would then enable you to use Terminal commands to achieve a secure wipe:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1139688/erasefreespace.html

Omit the 'freespace' parameter and you wipe the entire drive.

(Update) Just tested and yes you can get to 'Terminal' under 'Utilities' in the install screen.

I tried doing this earlier and I am not a "power user" and could not get it to work.

If you don't mind, can you tell me exactly what to type in Terminal? I have the 3TB fusion HD

 

[Freis968]

if you install the OS X and turn it off when it says reboot ?? before you enter a user name and password ? it will say welcome to os x !

I am unable to install El Capitan without putting in my username and pw...is there a way around this?

 

[AppleNewton]

are you booting to the built in recovery partition or are you pressing Command Option R to boot into internet recovery and then you can wipe the drive securely. you can't do it if your booted to the local recovery partition.

or if you have a firewire cable, connect both Macs, 5K iMac log into the desktop and the 3TB iMac startup holding T key and enter target disk mode and erase it from the new iMac. i wouldn't even worry about creating an OS install. Apple can do that if they absolutely need otherwise they will boot it off their own server.