Doing a drive wipe on an old Mac prior to disposal . . .

[britechguy]

I have not been doing much of any Mac-intensive work for years now as the demand is just not there, but have had contact from a client who has two old Macbooks that she wants to have wiped before donating them.

Just curious what folks are doing in this regard, preferably without needing to pull the drives to do it.

 

[Canadian Tech]

Press Command (⌘) and R on startup to get into the MacOS Recovery. From there you can wipe the drive with Disk Utility and then Reinstall MacOS.

 

[britechguy]

Thank you!

 

[Markverhyden]

I have not been doing much of any Mac-intensive work for years now as the demand is just not there, but have had contact from a client who has two old Macbooks that she wants to have wiped before donating them.

Just curious what folks are doing in this regard, preferably without needing to pull the drives to do it.

Depends. And I'm not talking about adult sanitary products...... LOL

Yes you can boot into recovery mode. But there's much more. Machines that natively shipped with 10.7, Lion, and has the "recovery partition" built into firmware. Basically PXE from an image on Apples servers. In those cases you can specify multiple passes for security. If your machine shipped before 10.7, and upgraded to 10.7 or higher, it's recovery partition is actually on the local drive. So if you nuke the entire disk the recovery partition goes with it. You can just nuke the MacintoshHD, again with multiple passes, and still be able to restore from the partition.

Either way I'd not use the built in recovery method. It might get tied to the original owners Apple account. In fact I'd do nothing more that nuke the machine and let them know the new owner will have to pay you or someone else to put on an OS if they can't figure it out. By the way, assuming they are Intel machines, they can run Windows, 7+, and Linux.

VERY IMPORTANT - make sure they check to make sure it's not listed in Find My Mac. You can login to the iCloud account and check there. If it's not removed you won't be able to attach it to a new account. But I did read some where there are ways to clear those BIOS/firmware.

 

[britechguy]

@Markverhyden

I need to get a handle on the exact vintage, but I suspect these are old enough that they actually are "recycler fodder."

Will check the other bits you've noted.

 

[Markverhyden]

@Markverhyden

I need to get a handle on the exact vintage, but I suspect these are old enough that they actually are "recycler fodder."

Will check the other bits you've noted.

The serial number should be on the bottom. Usually stamped/etched. If you can get it plug it in here to get all the info you need. But I agree. Most likely they're in the 10 years old range. Which puts them into the hobbyist category if they are running.