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Why are people so comfortable selling their old MacBook Pros?

G

gmhag

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 10, 2011
127
2
Hi, new here, I just bought my first mac, a MBP 13". The PCs that this is replacing is going to be torn apart (by me) and the hard drive destroyed. Is this an oldschool way of thinking? I am no computer expert but I always heard that when you dump a computer you need to destroy the hard drive or somone could pull private information off of it.

That being said, I see a lot of people buying and selling MBPs. Are you not worried about this? Or do you just delete your files and assume everything is wiped clean. I have an ipod and had an ipad which i wasnt worried about because you can reset (wipe) the device so it is like it was when it was new. Is there a way to do this with a MBP?
 
Or your can DoD standard wipe the drive with many programs. If they wanna go through the effort of stealing info after a DoD two cycle wipe, then go for it.
 
 
destroying a hard drive is a pain in the butt. if you are going budget-medieval on it, here is a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzpzbKYQUzk
If you are rich, you can get a hard disk crusher :)
http://www.edrsolutions.com/solution.asp

if you want to do it with a little less physical effort, when you reinstall windows (you should have a disc) it ought to give you the option to rewrite the drive. choose that and you will be fine (if you are throwing it out). but, for extra care, there are programs you can download to write over the drive more securely (so they say). personally, i don't think it very likely that the cia or some hacker is going to go through a landfill to retrieve my data, so i am not terribly concerned.
 
I wonder how much that crusher costs....doesnt look that much different than a log splitter at home depot. Too bad I dont have one of those.

Personally, i go the cheap route. Take some caveman techniques to it and call it a day.
 
The advantage that Macs have is the fact they retain a relatively high resale value. Many people seemingly sell fairly new laptops (one or two generations old) and use the proceeds to offset the cost of the new MBP.

As others stated, I do that as well and just wipe the drive before selling.
 
i don't see why you would destroy it as opposed to at least keeping it if you decide you do not want it in there before you sell.
 
Archlord said:
i don't see why you would destroy it as opposed to at least keeping it if you decide you do not want it in there before you sell.
Click to expand...

I was referring to destroying my old PC's harddrive which i am sure has ZERO resale value.
 
Orlandoech.com said:
Then why not keep it and buy an enclosure?
Click to expand...

I dont know what an enclosuere is unless you are referring to a tower. Sorry, im not up on the computer lingo. It is in a tower right now. The drive is 10+ years old...useless compared to the MBP.

So, theoretically, in a few years if i "wipe" the MBP it turns it back to essentially a brand new out of the box MBP....just an older model?
 
gmhag said:
I dont know what an enclosuere is unless you are referring to a tower. Sorry, im not up on the computer lingo. It is in a tower right now. The drive is 10+ years old...useless compared to the MBP.

So, theoretically, in a few years if i "wipe" the MBP it turns it back to essentially a brand new out of the box MBP....just an older model?
Click to expand...

An external HDD is basically a HDD in an enclosure. People like western digital make you pay a lot for it to be packaged up nicely, but you could use any HDD you have, buy an enclosure which isnt too expensive, and you have an external HDD for a lot less.
 
JR1993 said:
An external HDD is basically a HDD in an enclosure. People like western digital make you pay a lot for it to be packaged up nicely, but you could use any HDD you have, buy an enclosure which isnt too expensive, and you have an external HDD for a lot less.
Click to expand...

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for explaining that. I will check out some enclosures.
 
I personally would just put a new harddrive (cheap enough these days) in my macbook pro if I ever came to selling it and keeping the harddrive that I took from it.

As for the iphone, it doesn't get completely wiped with available options within the phone, I could easily recover my photos back if I wanted to. I've used all the options on the phone, including iwipe (this will completely erase the photos by writing over them with zeroes) from cydia and some apps still retained my log in details, the readitlater app for example. I've contacted the developers for some individual apps but they haven't fixed it yet. Also iirc the app store in settings saved my details to, I think its something to do with the phones id, can't remember what its called.
 
This really needs to be said: REFORMATTING YOUR DRIVE DOES NOT WIPE THE DATA

It makes it so the OS will ignore it but people can still read each block on the disc with a more sensitive algorithm and retrieve the slightly lesser magnetic charge on the disc.

Disk Utility offers an option to "zero-out" a drive. What this does it writes 0's in every block, multiple times, over and over. Every time it writes a 0 to a spot on the hard drive, the magnetic charge gets closer and closer to the 0 charge (whether that be positive of negative)

So if you're selling your MBP or any computer with a hard drive that once had sensitive data on it, do a 37-pass 0-out in disk utility. It will take awhile but it safeguards your information.
 
Nuckinfuts said:
This really needs to be said: REFORMATTING YOUR DRIVE DOES NOT WIPE THE DATA

It makes it so the OS will ignore it but people can still read each block on the disc with a more sensitive algorithm and retrieve the slightly lesser magnetic charge on the disc.

Disk Utility offers an option to "zero-out" a drive. What this does it writes 0's in every block, multiple times, over and over. Every time it writes a 0 to a spot on the hard drive, the magnetic charge gets closer and closer to the 0 charge (whether that be positive of negative)

So if you're selling your MBP or any computer with a hard drive that once had sensitive data on it, do a 37-pass 0-out in disk utility. It will take awhile but it safeguards your information.
Click to expand...

You don't need do 37 passes (disk utility actually provides a 35 option not 37). that's just ludicrous. a one pass zero out is perfectly fine. do a 7 pass if your really paranoid, but you don't need more than that.
I don't even understand why people think they need to zero out at all quite frankly. what kind of sensitive information do you have that you need to safeguard? I can't imagine there are lots of people buying used macbooks just to steal people data.
 
42streetsdown said:
You don't need do 37 passes (disk utility actually provides a 35 option not 37). that's just ludicrous. a one pass zero out is perfectly fine. do a 7 pass if your really paranoid, but you don't need more than that.
I don't even understand why people think they need to zero out at all quite frankly. what kind of sensitive information do you have that you need to safeguard? I can't imagine there are lots of people buying used macbooks just to steal people data.
Click to expand...

Personally, i wouldnt be surprised. Buy a macbook for a few hundred dollers to steal a few thousand from their identity. Seems worth wile for a criminal.
 
42streetsdown said:
You don't need do 37 passes (disk utility actually provides a 35 option not 37). that's just ludicrous. a one pass zero out is perfectly fine. do a 7 pass if your really paranoid, but you don't need more than that.
I don't even understand why people think they need to zero out at all quite frankly. what kind of sensitive information do you have that you need to safeguard? I can't imagine there are lots of people buying used macbooks just to steal people data.
Click to expand...

Bank information is a big thing, and one zero-out pass is the equivalent of a full reformat and is not adequate. And would you really want to risk your personal information on the assumption that you can't imagine people stealing data off of used hard drives?
 
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