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Looking for software to secure erase Mac Hard Drive
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Aug 2006
Status:
Offline
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I have a MacBook Pro and am going to sell it to upgrade to one of the newer MacBook Pro's. What is the best way to securely erase it before selling it? I have a lot of work data that I don't want to chance anyone being able to recover. In the past I had a windows program which conformed to DOD security for erasing. Is there anything like that I can do to securely erase my mac hard drive?
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Moderator  Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Polwaristan
Status:
Offline
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Boot from the OS X install/restore disk, open Disk Utility, click the Erase tab, then choose Security Options. Choose the 7-pass wipe. (It conforms to DOD standards.)
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: New York, NY
Status:
Offline
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Or if you're paranoid, choose the 35-pass wipe. It strips the coating off the platters. 
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Vandelay Industries
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: 888500128
Status:
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It also takes about a week and a half to do so.
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Moderator  Join Date: May 2001
Location: Hilbert space
Status:
Offline
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Usually overwriting your drive with 0s is sufficient and seven times faster. That would leave no traces of your files and unless you're a person of interest to the CIA, your files cannot be recovered (although I doubt even the CIA can recover your files) 
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: planning a comeback !
Status:
Offline
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I always wondered how you restore files after a one pass wipe.
We're talking bits here, right ? It's either there or gone. 
Is the 7 pass wipe need an urban myth ?
There is some industry debate as to how many times a drive needs to be rewritten in order for the old data to be one hundred percent irretrievable. But Henley, who worked eleven years in law enforcement as a Computer Forensics examiner says he has never encountered an instance where one complete cycle of character writes didn't work.
Nathan Jones, director of sales for White Canyon agrees and says that the Department of Defense standard for sensitive data is three complete passes and a verification check. However, he notes, after a single pass on today's modern hard drives, you would need an electronic microscope to see the data, and that no software could retrieve it. He believes the misconceptions regarding the number of passes needed to completely wipe the drive stem from information that was written with older hard drive technology in mind.
Breaking News: How to Recover Deleted Data
-t
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