Member Avatar for holye459

I am going to sell my old Mac Mini and i need to erase all the data stored on the drive. I heard that a factory reset is not secure enough. The data recovery software can still access the data on the drive. Is worth to a buy third-party app to wipe the drive?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by CimmerianX
Member Avatar for rproffitt

@rch1231. Why do you say that? At the Apple link I gave it wrote "If you want to securely erase the drive, click Security Options. Select an erase method, then click OK"

Did Apple lie?

Member Avatar for holye459

thank u. I will sort it out and see whether the data is accessible or not.

Edited by happygeek because: spammy quoted links removed
Member Avatar for rubberman

There is a tool called dd that is on every Linux distribution. Boot from a Linux live CD/DVD and do this (assuming that the Apple drive is /dev/sda): dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M
When it is done, the drive will be completely zeroed out. If you want, you can also specify if=/dev/random and wipe multiple times for more secure results.

Member Avatar for holye459

There is a tool called dd that is on every Linux distribution. Boot from a Linux live CD/DVD and do this (assuming that the Apple drive is /dev/sda): dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

this would be too hard for me. i have no clue about linux. thanks anyway.

Edited by happygeek because: deleted quoted references to spam link
Member Avatar for rubberman

Ever use the command line console window on OSX? That is basically the same thing. :-)

Member Avatar for CimmerianX

Darin's Boot n Nuke is an ISO image you can DL and burn to a bootable media (usb/CD/etc...)

I will securely erase the entire disk without relying on the manufacturer.

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