Selling an old MacBook Pro - best practice for wiping drive and reseting machine?

[james*b]

Hi
I am selling a C2D MBP, probably on ebay. Could anyone recommend the best way to completely reset it prior to sale, and share any other advice about the best state to leave it in for the new owner? Obviously I am concerned about wiping personal data, but also that it is in a convenient state for its new owner.
For instance it is is currently running Mac OS X 10.7, but with a an older machine like this, might it be better left to the new owner to decide if they want to upgrade?
Also, I have verified the hard disc with disc utility and it says it is ok - but them machine has a 6 year old physical drive - are there any easy tests so that I can double check that I am not selling someone a unit with problems, at least in the short term?
Thanks in advance,

 

[Bruno09]

Hi,

take a look at this : http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065

As for the hard disk, I personally replace it for a new one before I sell the machine.

 

[james*b]

Thanks for the advice. Is it recommendable to upgrade the OS to a newer version? It is currently on 10.7 and the processor is C2D.

 

[Netsurfer]

Best choice is Snow Leopard but you know, it's no longer supported so... I don't know...
I have a macbook pro late 2006 with Snow Leopard on and until a couple of weeks ago it worked perfectly (then I faced a GPU problem...).
If you take care of some things (use other browsers, are protected in your network, add some things manually regarding IPv6, be careful on the internet) it still works just fine...
It's your choice... BTW with Snow Leopard it runs more smoothly...

About wiping your data... when you initialize the disk you can choose... one pass, two passes and so on... it should be enough.

About the health...if you have Windows, just do a pass with HD Tune...

of course, you MUST use a SSD with that Mac... so it gets really new life :-D

 

[Fishrrman]

I still use 10.6.8 on my mid-2010 vintage MBPro, and it still runs fine.

If the MacBook will run 10.6.8, that's a good OS.

If you want something more current, I'd recommend 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion).

I -would NOT- recommend Mavericks or Yosemite for an older MacBook with a platter-based HDD.

 

[Netsurfer]

He can't go further than Lion...

 

[snaky69]

He can't go further than Lion...

Not true. My 2008 C2D machine is happily running Mavericks.

 

[Netsurfer]

my bad then sorry, I forgot there are other C2D machines