Wiping iMac for someone else to use while I'm away

[Izbizzle]

Hi,

I am going travelling soon and would like to leave my iMac for my mum to use while I'm away. I currently have a 2TB portable hard drive for my time machine backup. Forgive me for sounding clueless, but should I just wipe the iMac, reinstall OSX for her to use clean, and then reinstall from my time machine backup say 6 months from now to get 'my iMac' back? I don't want any of my stuff on there in case she accidentally deletes things, she's not a confident Mac user at all and I want to make it as easy as possible for her. It's running pretty slow at the moment, so I'd be curious to see if a clean install can do anything for the performance anyway? Thanks!

 

[ucfgrad93]

I'd set up a guest account for her to use.

 

[rigormortis]

don't let her use the "guest" account because if she logs out, everything in the home directory is erased. set her up her own account

back it up and then put the hard disk in the safe place so you can restore everything just in case
maybe get a separate hard disk to continue to do time machine backups for her


its your mom so i don't think you need to do a secure wipe or encrypt your hard disk, heh