Selling Mac Pro - how to clear everything.

[cdika17]

I'm selling my Mac Pro, I have bootcamp/windows installed. I have already backed up everything and erased my docs/movies/music. How do i revert it back to when i bought it, make sure nothing of mine is on there?

 

[psingh01]

I'm selling my Mac Pro, I have bootcamp/windows installed. I have already backed up everything and erased my docs/movies/music. How do i revert it back to when i bought it, make sure nothing of mine is on there?

Use Disk Utility to erase the drive. Use the security options to do a 7 or 35 pass erase. Then reinstall the system (if you want). If you only have one drive then you'll have to boot from a system disc and run Disk Utilities from there.

 

[phalewhale]

Boot from the MacOSX set up disk that came with your computer. When it loads go to 'Utilities' and go into 'Disk Utility'. Choose the disc in the computer and go to erase (not sure if this is the exact procedure, I'm working from memory here). When choosing the type of erase I'd recommend at the very least a single pass wipe but I tend to go for the 7-pass option. After this is complete, carry on with the install choosing all the default options. I then power off once the setup is complete so that the person buying your machine will have the fresh OOTB experience and can set up the OS with their own usernames etc.

 

[cdika17]

Perfect, thanks guys. Now for my new MacBook pro, yay!

 

[77seriesiii]

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in their forensics area see no need to go beyond a single full format, writing 0 or whatever. In short their whitepaper states that anything beyond a single full real format you would need a electron microscope to read the peaks and valleys, convert the peaks and valleys into 01110001 format and then convert into data, very sketchy at best. In other words, a Nation state would have to be interested in what you are doing on your computer and have actual physical access to the drive, an electron microscope and LOTS of spare time. A seven pass, DoD standard, on a 80gb drive would take over 14 hours, I have a stack of 200 - 500gb drives waiting their turn...just not that bored yet. In the forensics world, a single pass of zeros is a legal forensically clean drive.

A good tool in Linux, not sure if ported into MAC world is DCFLDD,

http://dcfldd.sourceforge.net/

There is another one that I use but for the life of me cant remember but any of the dd family of tools will work.

The mac disk wipe is more than sufficient, but I would only use a single wipe.

Happy wiping!

./e