Secure Erasing Intel Macs that DON'T have FileVault on

[Monologue0283]

I'm not able to find anything saying if this will work or not. I have a bunch of Intel iMacs to erase company data off of then get rid of. They were setup before I got here, and they were setup without FileVault. If I turn FileVault ON, let it encrypt then forget the password and reinstall whichever version of macos, is the data "gone"? I get that it wouldn't be DOD gone, but I'm not looking for that level, just gone enough that an average person won't be able to recover the data.

My other thought is to boot them all in recovery mode with diskutil wiping them, or maybe Target Disk Mode daisy chained and running shred/nwipe from a Linux box.

Yes, I asked why there was no FileVault but that's another discussion.

 

[iStorm]

Turning FileVault on should be sufficient. It'll go through and encrypt the disk. Then wipe and re-install macOS.

I'm assuming these are older Macs, but if they happen to be the 2020 iMacs with the T2 chip, then the disk is already encrypted even if FileVault is off. In that case, just erase/wipe and re-install macOS; it'll generate a new encryption key.

 

[frou]

In the past, I have used the "hdparm" command via a Linux LiveCD according to the following guide to trigger a SSD Secure Erase on various Intel machines, including a MBP.

SSD Secure Erase with proper ATA command

I recently wanted to completely wipe (not format) my two Intel X25-M Solid State (SSD) Drives that replaced the ones found in my MacBook Pro (2007) and my Dell Mini 10v (2009) so I went back to a f…

mackonsti.wordpress.com

 

[Monologue0283]

In the past, I have used the "hdparm" command via a Linux LiveCD according to the following guide to trigger a SSD Secure Erase on various Intel machines, including a MBP.

SSD Secure Erase with proper ATA command

I recently wanted to completely wipe (not format) my two Intel X25-M Solid State (SSD) Drives that replaced the ones found in my MacBook Pro (2007) and my Dell Mini 10v (2009) so I went back to a f…

mackonsti.wordpress.com

I think iStorm answered it, that encrypting should be enough. I just didn't know if it would do the trick is all.