Selling your Mac? Erase that hard drive
Did you know that Apple, maker of the iPhone, also makes computers? It is true! You might even own one yourself! This tip is for those of you looking to sell your Mac to get an iPhone (or if you're selling it for any other reason in fact). Our friends at Small Dog Electronics have posted some tips on securely erasing your Mac's hard drive BEFORE you sell it to some random dude.Sure, you can just nuke and pave (aka reinstall OS X), but if you're using OS X 10.4 the Disk Utility can make sure none of your data will be readable from that drive (or least not without extreme effort). Head on over to Barkings and check it out.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Fred said 4:06PM on 6-29-2007
Very Hodgmanian opening line.
Reply
Fred said 4:08PM on 6-29-2007
or Hodgmanesque if you prefer.
Reply
Scott McNulty said 4:20PM on 6-29-2007
Thanks! I'm a fan of his work. :)
Reply
E. said 4:35PM on 6-29-2007
I just ran a 7-pass erase on my old Powerbook last night as a prelude to selling it on Craigslist. It took about 4-5 hours on an 80 gig drive.
Definitely a must-do for anyone getting rid of an old hard drive if it's still in working order.
Reply
Billy K said 5:18PM on 6-29-2007
I just sold my G5 20" iMac two weeks ago. I did not take into account how long it would take to zero-out the hard drive. 250GB took me almost 5 hours. I wanted to 7-pass it, but I was up til 3am as it was.
Reply