Aug 13, 2018 - How to delete your personal information. Need to do several things if you don't want a stranger to access your data. How to Tell if Your Phone Has Been Hacked. Then I reload the operating system (usually XP Pro) after formatting the. Take it to get a new hard drive installed and the old one can be. Mac computer or Mac hard drive won’t boot after macOS High Sierra update or installation? Best Mac data recovery software recovers whatever you lost from Mac machines & storage devices. So if Mac cannot boot after system update, you can reset SMC to fix Mac won't boot issue after macOS.
Hi all- I wanted to completely erase my hard drive and reinstall OS 10.4. In going through the process, I chose 'erase and install' in the Installer utility, hoping it would do away with the multiple partitions I've made on to my Hard Drive. I also want to totally erase all my applications. After all that, I still have everything. I then tried to do the 'Erase free space' or 'Write with Zeroes' within Disk Utility and got some error saying it was not possible. Would someone please tell me the quickest way to erase EVERYTHING (partitions included)?
I'd even be willing to buy some app. That would do it for me. Extended Hard Drive Preparation 1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disk. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger.) 2.
After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.' S ID and size) from the left side list.
Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say 'Verified' then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to APM then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list.
Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window. Click on the Erase button. The format process will take 30 minutes to an hour or more depending upon the drive size. Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive. Apple Footer.
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Once you complete the software erasure methods described above you may avail yourself of any or all of the final hardware solutions listed here. Remove the disk from the Mac, clamp it to a work bench and drill many, many holes through the entire disk being careful to capture any and all shavings. Take ventilated disk and shavings and place in smelter. Melt entire disk down to molten metal and silicone. Boil off all non metallic residue and pour molten metal into 100 tiny spherical casts being sure to remove all residue from smelter.
Remove 100 cooled metal balls. Encase Metal balls into small hot glass figurines shaped like square safes.
Ship figurines to 99 friends, family, and customers, etc as unique gifts, keeping one as a testament to your thoroughness. Only then will you be certain your data can NEVER be retrieved. If you truly need super security to the level of no one possibly retrieving what was on the hard drive, EVER, then buy a new hard drive and take the old one out and USE A SLEDGEHAMMER! There comes a point where in some situations, security matters more than the cost. Take a situation where an original document is needed to legally bind some agreement; copies and electronic versions will not do. You will have to spend money to keep that thing secure and within your control and formulate backup plans in case your initial accessibility is thwarted by life's circumstances. So.you spend the effort and money to do your best to ensure that that document is available when the time arrives for its use.
If you have the above type of scenario in terms of ensuring no one can access your hard drive data, then you need to buy a new drive and just destroy the old one physically first by impact of a hard object bluntly, then in the fire. Personally, I think that just deleting the data is sufficient for me since the likelihood of some things happening are statistically mute. Hope this helps. Guys, as a DoD employee and a computer forensics investigator, here is the lowdown. NOBODY has been able to recover any usable data from a drive that has even been single pass wiped. The DoD used to abide by the 3Pass wipe standard but has now adopted 7 pass.
I've taken my GIAC certification and even in these classes NOBODY has been able to recover after a single pass has been made. The only reason why the DoD uses 7 is 'in the event of future technological advancements', perhaps someone can figure it out years into the future. But for personal data, I would say that a single pass is going to pack enough stopping power for anyone that has the tools to recover deleted files. If you're trying to protect yourself because you've got something illegal on the drive, then ummm you should go ahead with the paranoid 35Pass.
It will take a really long time, probably more than a full day at the least. Oh yeah and if you keep the drive and decide to physically destroy it later.Well make sure you take it apart fully and scrape the platters down real good with a sander or wire brush. Some data recovery firms have been able to recover data off platter FRAGMENTS that were blown apart from an IED attack. Amazing technology out there. Since 2001, all IDE & SATA HDDs have a built-in data destroy command called Secure Erase, to wipe the entire drive in one pass.
It'll even wipe areas on the disk marked off limits (like bad sectors) to the OS and is more effective than multiple passes by software. I don't know of a Mac utility to access the drive's erase command, but there's a Windows & Linux program. You can try to boot using the 'Ultimate Boot CD' as it comes with HHDErase to activate the drive's secure erase function. Using data recovery software, I've found that one pass of Secure Erase to be more effective than multiple passes of a software wipe. I was able to find 'some' data from the software wipe, and absolutely no data using the HDDs built-in data erase function. Secure Erase also wipes 'between' the data tracks for a more effective wipe.
Recently agreed to sell my early 2008 MBP and I want to do a completely clean install of OSX before handing it off, including securely erasing all of the contents of my current HDD. I don't know what sorts of personal information might be buried away in my computer (emails, Safari and Firefox passwords, etc.) I don't think that this person would attempt to recover that information or anything, but you never know and I guess I am also thinking about anyone else down the line that gets their hand on the computer that I don't know personally. Maybe I'm being a bit paranoid but better safe than sorry. What's the most headache-free way to go about doing this? Once you complete the software erasure methods described above you may avail yourself of any or all of the final hardware solutions listed here. Remove the disk from the Mac, clamp it to a work bench and drill many, many holes through the entire disk being careful to capture any and all shavings. Take ventilated disk and shavings and place in smelter.
Melt entire disk down to molten metal and silicone. Boil off all non metallic residue and pour molten metal into 100 tiny spherical casts being sure to remove all residue from smelter. Remove 100 cooled metal balls. Encase Metal balls into small hot glass figurines shaped like square safes. Ship figurines to 99 friends, family, and customers, etc as unique gifts, keeping one as a testament to your thoroughness. Only then will you be certain your data can NEVER be retrieved.