Macbook Partition Removal

[CaliZ]

I have a customer with an early 2011 Macbook Pro that is in mint condition and wanted us to wipe/reinstall the OS to resell it. (System report shows only 30 full battery cycles)

Would seem simple enough? Boot with Command+R, wipe the partitions and reinstall. However someone created an additional partition and it will not unmount for the life of me. I have tried with "diskutil force", but still getting an unmount error.

I ran the onboard diagnostics test that passed ("D" at boot), and ran the "First Aid" utility and still passed fine.

I'm thinking at this point I need to either remove the hard drive and wipe it on another *unix based system, or find a live boot OS I can run to get it back to factory settings. Any recommendations/thoughts?

 

[timeshifter]

find a live boot OS I can run to get it back to factory settings.

I figure out the latest macOS that the machine will take, download it from the Mac App store, make a bootable USB and install it. If I were going to resell it I'd throw a $45 240GB SSD in there and make the computer so much more appealing.

 

[CaliZ]

I figure out the latest macOS that the machine will take, download it from the Mac App store, make a bootable USB and install it. If I were going to resell it I'd throw a $45 240GB SSD in there and make the computer so much more appealing.

It will install the latest OS I believe, the RAM is not upgradable past the 8 GB, and is still very peppy. I will check out what might still be compatible for SSD's.

However we can close the thread as it was eventually resolved and partitioned/formatted successfully.

 

[pcpete]

The newest it will run is 10. 13. With an ssd it will run beautifully, without it it would be a waste to sell

 

[overburnz]

It will install the latest OS I believe, the RAM is not upgradable past the 8 GB, and is still very peppy. I will check out what might still be compatible for SSD's.

However we can close the thread as it was eventually resolved and partitioned/formatted successfully.

if it is the 2011 model it will take 16GB of RAM with no problem

 

[Markverhyden]

You should be able to boot up from a Linux stick on that machine. But I'm curious as to the partition and the drive. Is it an OEM original? What does diskutility say about the partition?

 

[CaliZ]

You should be able to boot up from a Linux stick on that machine. But I'm curious as to the partition and the drive. Is it an OEM original? What does diskutility say about the partition?

It is an original drive, we did end up getting the partitions formatted and resolved. I am still considering letting them know we can put an SSD in it (Mirror and replace the existing), but not sure that is going to make a big enough difference in selling it. (Samsung EVO 860 anyone?) Otherwise the laptop boots up pretty fast already as it has minimal use.

 

[pcpete]

A 2011 13" with an ssd we would sell between 500 and 600 dollars Without an ssd it is worth half that. Those old 5400 rpm drives work like garbage with the newer versions of OSX

 

[timeshifter]

but not sure that is going to make a big enough difference in selling it

It would to me as the seller. I couldn't in good conscience sell an old computer with an old near end of life hard drive to someone. Not only would it be dog-slow but I wouldn't expect it to last too long. On the other hand I'd be excited to sell a computer with an SSD, which speed things up an average of 3x in my professional experience.

 

[pcpete]

It would to me as the seller. I couldn't in good conscience sell an old computer with an old near end of life hard drive to someone. Not only would it be dog-slow but I wouldn't expect it to last too long. On the other hand I'd be excited to sell a computer with an SSD, which speed things up an average of 3x in my professional experience.

Exactly. With an ssd I would feel great about selling it at a top price and know the client got a good value

 

[CaliZ]

This is a 15" and the run time is maybe 100 hours on the hard drive, no where near EOL. But understand 16 GB and an SSD will make it more appealing to anyone. (Might just buy it off them if worth while.)

 

[Markverhyden]

Completely agree with the recommendation of an SSD. Doesn't matter what machine it goes in. One will always see a big bump in performance.

 

[pcpete]

This is a 15" and the run time is maybe 100 hours on the hard drive, no where near EOL. But understand 16 GB and an SSD will make it more appealing to anyone. (Might just buy it off them if worth while.)

on a side note that model had a horrible issue with that graphics chip failing You may get lucky if that is the original drive and the graphics card may not have been taxed much