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selling MBA erasing data question

A

abz1981

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 3, 2011
1,013
4
HI all

I am going to be selling my MBA, it came with Lion and I had it upgraded to yosemite.

Situation is that I want to safely and securely delete all data on my MBA so its as new and to make sure data is not recoverable. I went to disk Utility first, pressed on the erase option and then my MBA ended up freezing.

So I ended up doing command and r and re-starting my MBA, got to the initial boot screen and chose disk utility there to erase disk. Now It said if I wanted to chose other secure erase options then chose the button that said (security option) or something like that. That button was greyed out, so I couldn't chose it. So I ended up picking what I believed is my HD and erasing it. It was erased and I rebooted my MBA.

Once MBA was rebooted I got a question mark in the middle. So i go opps this does not sound right. So I ended up re-installing the OS via the internet recovery. It only gave me an option to install Lion. Which is what I am using now.

I guess what I need to know from my fellow mac users is what I should exactly do and how best it is to do it. I just want the best secure way or erasing my mac data so its unrecoverable and how to do this and have the mba set up as new. Sorry for the long post. hope someone can help.

thanks
 
abz1981 said:
HI all

I am going to be selling my MBA, it came with Lion and I had it upgraded to yosemite.

Situation is that I want to safely and securely delete all data on my MBA so its as new and to make sure data is not recoverable. I went to disk Utility first, pressed on the erase option and then my MBA ended up freezing.

So I ended up doing command and r and re-starting my MBA, got to the initial boot screen and chose disk utility there to erase disk. Now It said if I wanted to chose other secure erase options then chose the button that said (security option) or something like that. That button was greyed out, so I couldn't chose it. So I ended up picking what I believed is my HD and erasing it. It was erased and I rebooted my MBA.

Once MBA was rebooted I got a question mark in the middle. So i go opps this does not sound right. So I ended up re-installing the OS via the internet recovery. It only gave me an option to install Lion. Which is what I am using now.

I guess what I need to know from my fellow mac users is what I should exactly do and how best it is to do it. I just want the best secure way or erasing my mac data so its unrecoverable and how to do this and have the mba set up as new. Sorry for the long post. hope someone can help.

thanks
Click to expand...

The most effective option, short of the 'destroy your drive' answer your getting here which isn't helpful at all, is to encrypt your drive, then erase the disk. It will make data recovery a pain to say the least.
 
niteflyr said:
SSD's are virtually impossible to completely erase and be non-recoverable. If your data is that extremely sensitive, then destroy the drive. Otherwise, erase the drive and reinstall OSX, when setup assistant begins, turn off the computer and let the new owner set it up with his or her own account info.

Info:

http://www.cnet.com/news/selling-your-old-mac-prepare-it-first/
Click to expand...

Rather old advice (2010) speaking of OS installation on a DVD?
 
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