Clearing free space on iMac with 3rd party SSD prior to donation

[timeshifter]

Helping a client donate their old iMac. They have a friend who will be giving it to a needy family. The machine is a 2011 iMac with a Crucial SSD and 20GB RAM, running 10.13.6. It also has an activated copy of Office 2016 (only machine its active on, my client bought a new 2019 for their new machine).

Of course I could just wipe the drive and do a clean install of the OS. But, I'd like to preserve the working Microsoft Office as it could prove useful for the new owner.

I've already created a new user account and deleted the old account the client used. So all the data is "gone". In the old days I could run Disk Utility and scrub the free space to thwart any recovery efforts. Nowadays that functionality is gone and is apparently not needed for SSDs.

Regardless of whether I wipe the drive and do a clean install or just try to scrub the free space, I'm not sure I've destroyed the data clearly enough.

One recommendation is to enable File Vault disk encryption. Not sure how that effects free space. Also, not sure it would matter as the new owner would have the booted OS with the decrypted drive available anyway. Maybe I should do it twice? Encrypt, Decrypt, Re-encrypt. ??

 

[F1ComputerServices]

I think there is an issue with that iMac being "registered" to the first owner. Later when the 2nd "owner" tries to do major updates there will be issues where Apple won't allow the 2nd owner to do it without the 1st owner's permission.

Can you recover the CDKey for office and change owners (which will wipe the drive) and reinstall office


I

 

[timeshifter]

Never had any luck with recovering product keys on 2013 and up Office on Windows. Did it quite a few times on 2010 Office on Windows. Don’t think I’ve ever successfully transplanted at MAC Office install.

Regarding updates, this machine is from 2011 and is stuck on 10.13.6 so that shouldn’t be an issue.

 

[VISA MC]

2016 should be listed on the clients Microsoft account. Obtain it from there and do a fresh install of Mac OS through recovery mode. I’ve done a few of these for the same reason.

 

[Markverhyden]

Before doing anything Mac sure it has Find My turned off. If not they'll get locked out if they do a nuke and pave in the future. A 2011 iMac should have come with 10.7 so recovery mode should be built into the firmware. But just to be safe run the serial at everymac.com to see what it came with. If it did ship with 10.7 you can just boot into recovery mode and do a clean install.

Office 2016 should have a M$ account tied to it. The problem is, as far as I know you can't transfer it to a new EU.