Selling Mac

[Damonr]

I have just sold my Mac and have completely wiped and re-installed OS. Is this enough to protect the information that was on the HD? I am talking about user names and passwords for email accounts, bank accounts etc?

Many Thanks

Damon

 

[Hellhammer]

Yes. Re-installing OS will format the HD so all data will be wiped

 

[motulist]

Yes. Re-installing OS will format the HD so all data will be wiped

That's only true is you've specifically selected the option to reformat the hard drive and write zeros to the disk. This is NOT the default setting. If you don't tell it to write zeros to the disk then it is beyond trivial to recover most of what was already on your disk before.

 

[davidjearly]

It is enough in most cases, but you are always safer to do a 7-pass erase when there are passwords/bank details involved.

 

[chameleon81]

It is enough in most cases, but you are always safer to do a 7-pass erase when there are passwords/bank details involved.

7-pass takes forever .

 

[davidjearly]

7-pass takes forever .

Yes, I know but it's not as though you have to sit and watch it.

It is the safer option, and especially important if you have stored log-in information and banking details.

 

[J&JPolangin]

...if you're including the original HDD that you used, 7 pass it as stated above... you could buy the OEM size HDD for cheap and keep your drive if you wanted...

 

[alent1234]

The military intel guys I used to know would open the drives up and destroy the platters with Brillo pads or wire brushes. Did the same when I junked some old hard drives

my HP laptop has a disk sanitizer option in the bios that takes all night. A regular format leaves all data in place that can be recovered with a free program you download

 

[ag55]

Or you could do a quick format, and then just download tons and tons of files to fill up the disk entirely.