I want to eventually sell my iMac and for security purposes what do I have to do to make sure nothing private of mines is in the computer? In a nutshell, how do you restore the Mac back into it original form?
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What should I do to my iMac before selling it?
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The last computer I sold I was going to delete all paid-for apps, user accounts, music, etc-. After deciding it would take too much time and there was still going to be all sorts of logs strewn about the hard drive, I decided to reformat the drive using seven pass zero writing.
This is what I would do (after backing up my data, of course). It's the easiest and quickest (though you might let the 7-pass zero writing go overnight).
In Disk Utility, when you erase a drive, you have the option to pick a security preference. One will write zeroes to the entire drive. The 7-pass option writes zeroes to the whole drive, then repeats it six more times. There's also a 32-pass option (I think it's 32--some absurdly high number, anyway). The later two options are just more secure. Government standards, I believe, is 7 times.
nuke it from orbit
It's the only way to be sure.
that, or spray-paint it orange and eBay it as a collector's item
It's the only way to be sure.
that, or spray-paint it orange and eBay it as a collector's item
Put in the Install disk. During part of the install, it gives you the option to transfer a user account from another machine, or from a Time Machine backup.