FAST, free way to securely wipe hard drive

I have to return a 2 TB HD to Amazon (the drive tanked). I used Disk Utility to Zero Out data 7 times, but after 3 passes took almost 12 hours, I canceled in the middle of the 4th pass.
Is my data secure with 3 passes?
Is there freeware to QUICKLY erase or zero out data?
I'm hoping 3 complete passes was enough or that someone knows of free software that shreds or destroys data securely. I'd hate to spend $25 or more just to zero out data on a bad hard drive, but I guess I would if that was the only option.

Even one pass is probably enough for most situations.
According to Apple's Disk Utility description, the fast single-pass "Zero Out Data" option provides "good" security.
And [this electronic recycling company page|http://www.howtowipeyourdrive.com/macintosh.aspx] includes:
Zero Out Data— SECURE for most commercial use - There are forensics utilities that in theory could retrieve some data however they are extremely expensive and time consuming and there are no documented cases of this actually taking place.
And from a MacWorld article, "Saying good-bye to your Mac"
http://www.macworld.com/article/57155/2007/04/oldmac_goodbye.html
Select Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) from the pull-down menu; then click on the Security Options button and make sure Zero Out Data is selected. This will overwrite your drive with zeros. (Newer versions of Disk Utility also include 7-Pass Erase and 35-Pass Erase options— *overkill for those of us who don’t keep state secrets on our machines*.)
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Similar Messages

Wipe Hard Drive clean install of Window Server

What is the best way to wipe Hard Drive? Save a partition for later use and use remaining partition to install Sever OS, save to external drive(to use later) and wipe completely(cleanest install, I believe), complete wipe completely not worrying about
saving anything, or suggestions?
NOTE; The machine has never been turned on, still in the box. Hardware goes above and beyond Min. Requirements for software.
Which is the best way to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials Evaluation download - ISO image? Azure?
How to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials from ISO image- Download and burn to DVD, Save to USB or to actual machine?
How to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials from Azure? (Don't have Azure account)
I need to have it completed ASAP so I can install Accounting/PM database software. Need it operational Monday if all possible. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Woodrow

There are a lot of embedded questions here, I'll try to hit them all:
1) If you're reinstalling on the same partition, you do not need to be too crazy in how it gets formatted. There's no performance gain to using BCWipe or anything. When you format, you're just erasing the table of contents, then overwriting the
actual data later on anyway. Just keep it simple.
2) If you want to save the data, just copy it somewhere else before you delete anything. If you're not concerned about the data, don't worry about it, just go back to answer #1.
3) You can download the Evaluation OS from the MS website. You cannot turn an eval copy into a full install without reinstalling, so are you sure that is what you want? You'll end up test building, then when you like it, you'll have to do it
all over again.
4) ISO to DVD or USB: Doesn't matter how you end up installing it. Today's machines can usually support any install media. Some ways are faster, but you're only talking about saving minutes. What does it really matter?
- Chris Ream -
**Remember, if you find a post that is helpful, or is the answer, please mark it appropriately.**

Best ways to use new hard drives?

I got some really useful answers on this forum when I was trying to recover from a hard disk crash. Thanks to all who helped. Now, I have a few more questions.
On the recommendation of the service technician at the Apple
store, I went on line and bought a Seagate 250 GB
internal drive, and installed it in my G4, only to
discover that it can only recognize 128 GB. Oh, well, it was pretty cheap.
Once I got the system rebuilt and running OK, I went
to work on the CD burner. It turned out to be broken,
and the manufacturer, La Cie, recommended I just
purchase an internal CD/DVD burner, and install it in
the old case. After thinking about that for awhile, I
thought, why don't I just buy another internal hard
drive, and install that in the CD case? that way ,
I'd have an external firewire drive to use for backup, instead of burning CDs. which is a pain. So, I found a 160 GB Seagate drive, even
cheaper than the 250, and bought that. I should have
checked to see whether the old hard drive would fit in
the CD case, but, of course, I didn't. Turns out the
3.5 inch internal hard drive is much smaller than the
CD drive, I think the electronics would work OK, but
I don't have a good way to secure the disk drive in
the larger case. So, now I have 2 internal hard
drives in my Mac, one a 250 GB which my Mac thinks is
128 GB, and the other a 160 GB, which the Mac also
thinks is 128 GB!
My questions:
1. Would the electronics in the CD/DVD case work with the ATA drive?
2. Anyone know of a good work-around to secure the drive in the larger case?
3. If I keep both drives in the Mac. Can I make the slave drive bootable? How?
4. If I should get a good answer to #1 and #2, or choose to buy a new hard drive enclosure, how do I go about cloning the contents of the master drive to the slave, so that I can use the larger drive as my external drive without having to repeat the painful process of building my system from scratch?
5. I think I remember seeing reference to a software solution to the 128 GB limit. Is that correct? What are the drawbacks? do I have to reformat the drives?
Thanks.
Powermac G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 1.4 GHz, 896MB SDRam

Hi, Dave!
I don't know for sure whether the drive will work in the FW case that held the optival drive. Why don't you temporarily connect it and check?
If you install the drive internally and put an operating system on it, it will boot regardless of whether it's configured as Master or as Slave. You could have an operating system on both drives if you cared to. You'd be able to boot from either of them (which is determined by - and may be changed in - the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences from a booted system, the menubar of the install disk, or the Startup Manager (invoked when the option key is held down at startup).
You can use the Restore option in Disk Utility to clone your startup volume to a volume on another drive. Better yet, try SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner, which are faster. Cloning will make a bootable duplicate of the startup volume you can use just like the original, without having to reinstall anything.
The software solution you're referring to is Intech's ATA Hi-Cap Support Driver. Read the info at the site; there are some restrictions on how you need to set up the drives for it to work properly. If you instead buy an ATA-133 PCI controller card ($60-$80), you won't have the restrictions and will have a faster drive bus to operate with, taking advantage of the speed of the ATA-100 or ATA-133 drives you have, while allowing you to use the native logic board bus to add an additional (<120GB) drive.
In any event, in order to realize the full capacity of the drives, you'll need to reformat them from the 128GB they're currently formatted to.
Gary

I use an external hard drive for my Lightroom library and I notice that all the images shown on there are DNG. On my MAC hard drive I have images shown as NEF. I desperately need to free up space on my hard drive, can I safely delete these NEFs?

I use an external hard drive for my Lightroom library and I notice that all the images shown on there are DNG. On my MAC hard drive I have images shown as NEF. I desperately need to free up space on my hard drive, can I safely delete these NEFs?

dj_paige wrote:
however, I do point out that obtaining an additional hard drive and not throwing anything away seems a preferable solution to me.
heidie22, dj_paige has a very good point there. I would not through away the NEF files; I would archive them to a external drive.
By the way, I am assuming that converting RAW files to DNG is a decision you have made and not an accident.

How to wipe hard drive bc selling computer and want all passwords/personal info gone? etc

how to wipe hard drive bc selling computer and want all passwords/personal info gone?

You need to boot the computer from another source, e.g. a CD or an external drive. Then run Disk Utility, select the drive you want cleaned up, and run Erase. Note the security options: "write zeroes" will erase the drive completely.

I need to free up space on my hard drive. How do you move photo's to my external?

I need to free up space on my hard drive in order to complete a new update. How do I move photo's from my macbook air to my external hard drive?

You need to backup your Iphoto library to Time Machine first (if you havent already done so)
THEN you need to copy your Iphoto library to another HD before deleting from your Macbook ,....because 1 copy only is = NO COPY in case of HD failure!
To move an iPhoto liobrary -
quit iPhoto and drag the iPhoto library intact as a single entity to the external drive - depress the option key and launch iPhoto using the "select library" option to point to the new location on the external drive - fully test it and then trash the old library on the internal drive (test one more time prior to emptying the trash)
And be sure that the External drive is formatted Mac OS extended (journaled) (iPhoto does not work with drives with other formats) and that it is always available prior to launching iPhoto from LarryHN
As to your AIr and its SSD =
You need to change the premise of your SSD use.
see here:
Your Solid State Drive and having enough space inside your Macbook Air & Pro
Solid State Drive usage premise, or the “more space / upgrade SSD” question
There have been questions posed and positions taken by many people who are trying to use their Macbook Air or Pro’s solid state drive (SSD) as a mass media storage device, for either pictures, videos, massive music collections or all three combined; but this should not be the working premise of a ‘limited’ SSD and its use.
In which, it’s the case of those users with either 128GB, 256GB, or even 512GB of internal SSD space, that have or are running “out of space”, that questions are raised. The immediate premise of some users can sometimes be “(how to / if) upgrading my SSD” when in fact in nearly all instances another approach is the logical and sensible one that needs to be looked into and exercised.
Any Macbook containing a SSD should be idealized as a ‘working platform’ notebook containing all your applications, documents, and weekly or bi-weekly necessary files. All collections of media files such as pictures, music, and videos, unless directly needed should be kept off the notebook and on an external hard drive or likewise. While the ‘working platform’ premise is also the case with larger internal conventional hard drives of 1TB+, its implementation isn't as critical except in terms of data protection.
Realistically, you should at most coordinate roughly 20 to 25% of your total SSD space to all audio-video personal use media (picture / music / video collections), leaving the remaining amount on an external HD.
Nobody should consider any notebook a data storage device at any time under any circumstance, rather a data creation, sending, and manipulation device; and in the case of a SSD, this is more important for purposes of having sufficient working space on the SSD and reducing SSD ‘bloat’ in which cases someone is wrongly attempting to use the SSD space as a large media storage nexus.
The rare exception to the collective usage and premise of SSD use in which a much larger SSD is truly needed are for those in video and photography professions that require both the extremely fast speeds of the SSD and the onboard storage for large and or many video and photography files. However this also falls under the premise of a ‘working platform’ for such peoples rather than the intent of many who are using the SSD as passive and static data storage for media files very infrequently needed or accessed.
All on-notebook data collections should be logically approached as to necessity, and evaluated as to whether it is active or passive data that likely doesn’t need to be on the notebook, allocations of space-percentages to as-needed work and use, apportioning space for your entertainment media, and questioning whether it should it be on the notebook for more than short-term consumption.
Considerations should be made in the mind of any user in differentiating the necessary system data (System hub) comprising the Mac OSX, applications, necessary documents that both must and should be on your internal SSD, and that of the users personal data (Data hub) comprising created files, pictures, music, videos, PDF files, data created or being created and otherwise, that likely unless being used soon or often should be parked on an external hard drive for consumption, or temporarily loading onto the internal SSD.
You both can and should purchase whichever SSD size you need or see fit, but even in the case of the largest of SSD, unless use-considerations are made, and SSD spaces are allocated as should be the case indicated above, one can easily and immediately run into this quandary of “needing more internal SSD space”, in which instance a different approach in usage must then be implemented.
However it is almost always the case, that such large media files are wanted to be stored internally rather than actually needed, in which case the external HD is both prudent as well as necessary. Additionally costs per MB are infinitely less on an external HD than an internal SSD in any consideration of data expansion needs.
A Professional Example
In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace.
You should also never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your Macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’. This is especially what your external HD is for.
Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their notebooks internal SSD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.
Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your Macbook has a SSD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your notebook to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.
Slim USB3 1TB external hard drive
External Hard Drives
External hard drives are both extremely cheap and regardless of the size of your internal SSD (or even internal hard drive if the case), you need an external hard drive with your SSD equipped Macbook for several reasons:
1. Data backup and protection.
2. Redundancy for important data.
3. Necessitated ideal space for large media files for collections of pictures, videos, and music etc.
While ever changing in price, typical portable 2.5” external hard drives in USB3 run roughly $65 for 1TB or $120 for 2TB small portable USB3 hard drives. Such drives range in thickness between 5mm and 15mm, with recent improvements in storage of 500GB drives in 5mm profiles.
There is almost no premise in which a small 12mm thick 1 Terabyte USB hard drive cannot be taken along with any Macbook as an external large storage extension inside any Macbook carry case or pouch. Typically such external HD profiles are not much bigger than a deck of cards.
External hard drives are a foregone necessity for purchase with any Macbook for at the very least Time Machine backups, data redundancies, and ideally for large media storage.

How do i free up space on my hard drive

What is the most efficient way to free up space on my hard drive?

The following articles have some good tips:
Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk and
Freeing Up Hard Disk Space

I just bought a new Mac and I want to transfer some data (not all) from my old Mac. Basically, I want to move my itunes library, iphoto library, and a few documents. I have not even turned on my new Mac yet. Is the best way by an external hard drive?

I just bought a new Mac and I want to transfer some data (not all) from my old Mac. Basically, I want to move my itunes library, iphoto library, and a few documents. I have not even turned on my new Mac yet. Is the best way by an external hard drive?

If both have Firewire ports then you can accomplish your goal by using Target Disk Mode. If this is not possible then you can do using an external drive or if you have a local network connect both to your network and use filesharing between the two computers.
File Sharing on Macs
Mac 101- File Sharing

Wipe Hard Drive/Fried Logic Board

How do I wipe Hard Drive clean when G4 Powerbook will not start up due to fried logic board? I can wait 3 weeks, and One to One will tell me at Apple...lol...

Or you can get this low-cost adapter:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/U2NV2SPATA/
and not need a case. I can't begin to tell how many times this gadget has made an other wise tough job easy. Works with PATA 3.5", PATA 2.5", and SATA drives.

Need to wipe hard drive to restore to previous date from time machine back up. Unclear how to do this. Please advise or provide link to this procedure on website. Thanks.

Need to wipe hard drive to restore to previous date from time machine back up. Unclear how to do this. Please advise or provide link to this procedure on website. Thanks.

See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

I just got my MacBook Pro a month ago. However I am realizing I need more hard drive space due to aps and programs. I use am external but am concerned about the space. Is there a way to upgrade my hard drive from apple and keep my warranty valid?

I just got my MacBook Pro a month ago. However I am realizing I need more hard drive space due to aps and programs. I use am external but am concerned about the space. Is there a way to upgrade my hard drive from apple and keep my warranty valid?

That would depend on whether your model actually has a hard drive. If you have the new 2013 Retina model, then you have a fixed storage device built-in that cannot be modified after purchase.

Purchase Adobe Acrobat XI, had to wipe hard drive clean & start over, need to reload it. Can u Help ?

Purchase Adobe Acrobat XI, had to wipe hard drive clean & start over, need to reload it..Can u Help ?

Hi greg v.p44270855,
We would love to help. What part are you having trouble with? For starters, please make sure that you're logged in as an administrator, and temporarily disable any antivirus software. If you don't have the Acrobat installer, you can download Acrobat from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat.html.
If you're running into a particular problem with the installation, please provide some specifics about the problem (error messages, operating system and version, and so so).
Best,
Sara

Securely erase hard drive on Mac Air for sale on e-bay.

I would like to sell my Air (1.6 gz -80GB) on e-bay and want to securely erase hard drive (I use a lot of financial info.). I am running Snow Leopard but I no installations left. I have the original CDs but not the external super drive. Any ideas on how to erase all data? Thanks a million.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3263
Dave M.
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What is the best way to install & clone hard drives on macbooks? does apple do that?

It is time for a new hard drive for my macbook - just doiubles the memory, but am still getting the spinning beach ball. The genius bar told me I need a new hard drive, but that I could buy it and out it in myself. But, I just heard that the best way to replace the hard drive is to clone it... and that is beyond my abilities.
Does apple do that??? suggestions? thanks!

Please note that "cloning" a hard drive is not the same as replacing it. You clone the drive to preserve its contents (usually on the drive that will be the replacement). You still have to get into the MB, physically, take out the old drive and install the new one. There are plenty of web sites that tell you how to do this replacement. This is one I like: http://www.macinstruct.com/node/130
The details do vary depending on the vintage of your MB, so if that link is not for your model, try searching the web for instructions specific to your need. Or post back here with details about your Mac.
If Apple did agree to do this for you it would probably cost almost as much as a new MB. (And if you do buy a new MB, my local Mac store will do the data transfer as a bonus!)

How wipe hard drive clean without a disk and reinstall OS?

Running a 15" Mid 2010, OS 10.8.3; after migrating Profile to new MacBook want to wipe hard drive clean & reinstall Mountain Lion 10.8.3 in order to give to daughter as a "new" computer. All I can find in archived discussions is how to do it w/ a disk.

Yes I would.
The iLife Apps, "i" Photo, Movie and Garageband (And "i" DVD and WEB if you Mac came with Snow Leopard originally), are not included with the Operating system. They are separate applications that you need to either download from the Mac App Store, from your Purchases area once you have logged into the MAS with the Apple ID you used to register that Mac with, or from the second System Reinstall Disc, the Applications disc, that came with your Mac if it originally came with Snow Leopard.
So I read you are running a Mid 2010 MBP. In that case you would need to use the second Original System Disc to reinstall the iLife Applications.
That may be a problem for you as the iLife apps that came with that system are 3 years old and may not want to install on Mt Lion 10.8.3.
If you run into problems installing them from that second system disc you may have to start off by first reinstalling Snow Leopard and then the iLife Apps and Then Upgrade to Mt Lion. Making sure after installing Snow Leopard and the iLife Apps you update everything through Software Update before you do the Mt Lion upgrade.
Sorry about the hassle but blame Apple for that.
Hopefully you have the Original system discs but if you don't then you can order a replacement set from Apple for a small charge.
Good Luck & Best Wishes.

FAST, free way to securely wipe hard drive

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