Selling Mac, can hard drive be securely erased?

I know that Leopard allows 35-pass erase as it's maximum security level for formatting hard drives - but can this be trusted when selling a computer? I've heard people saying that the only secure way of removing data from a hard drive is to smash it with a hammer.
I'm planning to sell my PowerMac G5, and have a couple of low capacity SATA hard drives that I was planning to include with it.
My data isn't 'top secret' but it's possible that caches might contain my credit card details or other similar data. How safe is the 35-pass erase?

Hi bilbo_baggins-
Unless you are selling it to some government spooks you should be fine
If you are that concerned, go buy a cheap, low-capacity SATA drive and install that to be sold with the machine.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Similar Messages

  • My dad has dementia - does not remember his password. His hard drive has been erased. We need to reload Mountain Lion and can't figure out how to do it.

    My dad has dementia - does not remember his password. His hard drive has been erased. We need to reload Mountain Lion and can't figure out how to do it. Internet recovery asks for his Apple ID and password. He has no idea. I have an Apple ID but have never bought anything through the iTunes store so it won't accept my Apple ID. I don't know if his computer is under warranty. He does not remember if he has Applecare. I tried reinstalling Leopard -- the computer originally came with Leopard -- but the computer screen goes grey and a message comes up saying I need to restart. He wants to give this computer to me since it's useless to him. What do I do to get a system on it again?

    You will need to reformat the hard drive to go back to Snow Leopard or Leopard.
    Does he have a Snow Leopard Disk? He should, as there is no way to go from Leopard to Mountain Lion without it. If you can find the Snow Leopard Disk, I'd at least start with that.
    You will need to use Disk Utility in the installer to format the hard drive and get rid of the recovery partition.
    Boot from the installer disk by holding down the C key on restart. When it boots, Open Disk Utility (Utilities menu, at least in Snow Leopard).
    Select the Hard drive and then click the Partition tab.
    Select 1 Partition from the partition menu.
    Select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format.
    Name the drive (Macintosh HD is the standard).
    Click Apply to partition the drive.
    When it is done, quit Disk Utility and install the OS.

  • My mac mini hard drive is failing. I am no longer under warranty. Do you know how much it cost to have Apple replace the hard drive? or How I can replace it myself?

    MY mac mini hard drive is failing. I am no longer under warranty. Do you know how much it cost to have Apple replace the hard drive? or How I can replace it myself?

    You can do it yourself. I did on my 2009 Mini
    http://www.ifixit.com/Device/Mac_Mini
    Also, this place sells HSDs and has install videos.
    http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/

  • Can't transfer files from a mac external hard drive to a windows hard drive

    Today I went to a friends house to try and take some of his music from his external hard drive. So we plugged his mac converted hard drive into my computer, which is operating on windows 7, and my computer could not read that anything was there. So we plugged in my windows converted into his Macbook Pro, and his computer was able to read it, but for some reason, we could not transfer files from his hard drive to mine.
    I was just wondering if I am doing something wrong, or if it could be because I am using a hard drive that I bought in China, and any information would be great.

    NTFS is readable in Mac OS, but can't be written to.
    HFS+ is not readable in Windows, though Apple now has a (somewhat problematic and buggy at times) service to allow Windows on mac to read HFS+ to make it easier and more convenient.
    There are drivers (free and commercial) to add the ability to read and write to each.

  • Can I update to ML without backing up my hard drive will it erase?

    Can I update to ML without Backing up my hard drive will it erase?

    You should always have a backup.  And especially immediately before any major (10.6 or 107 to 10.8) upgrade.
    Things can always go wrong.
    But upgrdes only replace system files, so your "pure data" should be fine.

  • Where can I find Mac Pro Hard Drive Holder?

    Where can I find Mac Pro Hard Drive Holder? Only 4 came withe the computer and I need some more.
    Anybody knows where I could buy some?
    Thanks

    http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2705

  • My Mac's hard drive is full. Mostly of pics and movies. Can I upload and move photos to Icloud, then delete them from my Mac? If yes how?

    My Mac's hard drive is full. Mostly of pics and movies. Can I upload and move photos to Icloud, then delete them from my Mac? If yes how?

    Use something such as OmniDiskSweeper (my favorite) or Grand Perspective to find out where large files may be. iCloud isn't going to help much if you've so much data that it won't fit on a 1TB drive. Sounds as if it's time to either buy another drive or at least an external with more space.
    Good luck,
    Clinton
    MacBook Pro (15” Late 2011), OS X Yosemite 10.10, 16GB Crucial RAM, 960GB M500 Crucial SSD, 27” Apple Thunderbolt Display

  • New to MAC, External Hard Drive Problem Transfering files to MAC

    Hello All.
    First I'm new to the MAC world, just bought my powerbook pro yesterday. Love it. I tired looking for this topic and found similar post but no solutions that I understood.
    10.4.9
    I have a 260GB NTFS external hard drive with about 100 gigs of info on it. I used it with my PC, running XP Pro.
    I want to be able to access that HD from my MAC but all I can do is read, I cannot write. I was hoping it would just hook up to my MAC and I'd be able to read and write.
    I do not need to be able to use this HD with my PC anymore. I'm 100% MAC now. I was hoping someone could give me some advice on how to make that happen. Do I have to reformat my HD? What system is that FAT32, NTFS? Something else? And how do I go about doing it?
    Thanks to all.
    D-Power

    Welcome to Apple Discussions!
    You are correct, Macs can only write to FAT32, or Mac formatted hard drives with the built-in software, unless the Mac is networked to the PC, as this article describes:
    http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=19652
    You can also add Macfuse to the Mac, to connect to an NTFS drive, and that's linked here:
    http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/
    To reformat the drive, you'll have to erase it with Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility. Thus before you can reformat it, you'll have to copy over any essential information. The Partition section under Disk Uitlity lets you create a GUID Mac formatted partition under its Options button, and that is ideal for both Intel iMacs and MacBook Pros. If the label under the screen says Powerbook, let us know, and we'll direct you to that forum instead, if we can't answer your question here. Apple Partition Map on the other hand is the ideal for Powerbooks, and PowerPC based Macs. Formatting GUID or Apple Partition map, will let you boot from that drive, to verify that a clone backup was done properly depending on which Mac you made the clone for. Formatting FAT32 or NTFS won't let you make a full backup of your internal hard drive, and only will let you use it for backing up user documents. I highly recommend Shirt-pocket Superduper for backing up, as my FAQ* explains:
    http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
    P.S. The MacBook Pro is the Intel version of the Pro notebooks. You posted to the Intel iMac forum. The Intel iMac looks like: . So unless you have that Mac, you are in the wrong forum. There is no such Mac as the Powerbook Pro. You'll see the label in front says MacBook Pro below the screen if that's what you got. Here's the forum for it for category reference:
    http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=190
    And pick a forum within it to post a new topic, if I can't answer your question here.
    In addition, this nomenclature article will be helpful as well:
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=503342&tstart=0
    * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

  • My Passport for Mac external Hard drive is not recognized

    I recently had to purchase a new MacBook Pro, and when I tried to get files off of my Passport for Mac external hard drive.  I get an error stating "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."  And when I try to initalize, and verify disk, I get this message "Partition map check failed because no slices were found.".  I have already updated firmware for the external hard drive.  One site I found stated that it could be that the USB port is not strong enough, and I would need a 2.0 Booster cable.  Does anyone know if this would work? 

    What did you old Macbook die from?  Likely the HD in it is still ok,  yes?
    You can remove the HD inside your old dead Mac and put it into a $20 HD enclosure or HD dock, and remove the photos that way, very easy.........IF your old Macbook died from something other than ALSO a bad HD.
    You said----my OLD Macbook pro which recently lost video
    What happened with your old "dead" macbook?  Still have it?

  • Mac Pro Hard Drive Connectors

    I need to replace the two screws that hold the hard drive connectors to the Mac Pro.
    Does anyone know where I can begin to find these? They are two small black screws.
    The previous owner of my Mac Pro removed them so that he could attach an SSD drive loosely to the Mac Pro.
    I'm going to replace the SSD drive, as it failed, and it comes with a 3.5" tray that should attach to the Mac Pro hard drive carrier, but when I push it back in to align up with the hard drive connector, since he removed the screws, it doesn't align up and go in without me manually connecting it. I'd like to get it back to the way it was with the screws.
    So...I wonder what part number that is or how I can get those two little screws, the exact ones?
    Any advice would be great.
    Thanks.

    ChrisMc73 wrote:
    Yeah there are two models for this Icy Dock SSD Kit...I think I want the screwless version.
    MB882SP-1S-2B - uses screws to mount the drive and has more ventilation for a moving parts 2.5" drive
    MB882SP-1S-1B - is screwless and is meant more for SSD drives
    I use the screwless version.
    As for dvwearhouse and others, unless you know the part number, how do you know where to look?

  • Photos stored on my Mac's hard drive?

    Where are my photos stored on my Mac's hard drive?

    Note to users
    Seriously it is ridiculous to use improper and unsupported ways to access your files - iPhoto is a SQLite database and direct access to the database contents is not supported - you should use the proper tools as described above - doing otherwise does not work well and endangers your photos as small errors on a user's part can damage the database and corrupt it causing dataloss
    What you need a forum for it to explain to you haw to use the program since you do not bother to read the help information or take the tutorials
    LN
    PS also note that posting erronous suggestions on two year old threads is not really a smart idea either

  • What would happen if my mac os hard drive failed

    so i have 2 hard drives
    1 for windows bootcamp and 1 for mac
    as it is now, i boot to the windows boot manager then choose my copy of windows.
    what would happen if my mac os hard drive failed right now?
    would the computer still boot and be unaffected unless i tried to boot to mac?

    failure is usually not dead. It can be a bad sector, but usually it is a directory issue or just the partition table (but which require either quick or long format)
    if you have a workstation, you should clone both operating systems; you should not put them on the same hard drive. And you just use the clone you made for each (Paragon Clone OS for Windows $19; Carbon Copy is sharefare for OS X)
    both of those allow booting off the new hard drive while you figure what you want to do or what happened.
    If you only have two hard drives use the other drive bays.
    Basically NOTHING happens if you pull one or the other.

  • Why my Mac Pro hard drive noise and too slow?

    Why my Mac Pro hard drive noise and too slow? Totally 8 gb speed system but now very slow . Please give some suggestions

    Another thing you can do in Lion (and ML) is click on the "Info" button in Disk Utility to get the SMART status of the drive.It's more detailed now than it used to be and it might tell you if something is wrong.
    A lot can go wrong with a hard drive which is why I tend to point people to the downloads section of the following web site:
    http://scsc-online.com
    They have a free hard drive troublleshooting download book there. I reccommend people download that before asking questionis because there are tons of problems that can act like hard drive problems when there's nothing wrong with the system at all. For example, how full is the drive? How many applications are running? What's the status of Spotlight indexing? How many apps are you running? How much memory do you have?
    I could probably think up 20 or 30 more if needed.

  • My Mac Book  hard drive is nearly full. How do I move  iTunes music, etc folders to a different location on an external hard drive and still access as if on my Mac?

    My Mac Book  hard drive is nearly full. How do I move  iTunes music, etc folders to a different location on an external hard drive and still access as if on my Mac?

    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449

  • Moving Garageband Music Files to MyBook for Mac External Hard Drive on OSX 10.5.8  I'm a musician and need to make space on my mac hd. Is it safe to move music files there and delete them on the mac? Thanks!

    use a MyBook for Mac external hard drive.
    I need space on garageband or the entire hard drive, since I am getting the "need space on the hard drive" messages.
    It's scary to move my precious music files!
    How should I move them to the external and feel safe about doing so?
    Or are there other methods besides the obvious, clearing caches, deleting the trash and downloads, etc., that are recommended?
    I am doing music now and producers are waiting for the new vocals!
    Help!
    Thanks!

    The process is as simple as just copying your Garageband project to the external drive and deleting from the macs hard drive. But before you delete anything you really need to back them up to someplace else also. Having just one copy is not safe. Get another external drive, DVDs or even flash drives, you absolutely need anything important in more then one place.

Maybe you are looking for

  • Dual Monitor displays weird colors

    Hi there, Yesterday I bought a Displayport to HDMI adapter (Mini DisplayPort Male - HDMI female) for my MacBook Pro 15" (Late 2011 version). I use this to connect my MacBook Pro to my Philips 32" television. Everything has been set up (I've adjusted

  • Need 8.1.5.0.2 patch file for sun

    Dear, My Client have oracle 8.1.5.0.0 running on Sun OS.but he does not have CSI number(they were Missed that Number).but now we are facing some problem regarding Oracle old patch.so that i need Oracle 8.1.5.0.2 patch. What shall i do for getting Ora

  • Activity cost at work center

    Dear Exports, I have a requirement in my project 1. In a work center we have 3 activities. 1. Labour time                                                                    2. Machine Time                                                              

  • Snapshot too old in a very big undo tablespace

    Hi, I can see the snapshot too old error message in my alert log file. ORA-01555 caused by SQL statement below (Query Duration=5 sec, SCN: 0x000d.a1e610e5): It shows that query failed just after its start within 5 seconds. I really dont understand th

  • Performance Monitor Remote Data Collection unable to get data

    When attempting data collection of a remote Windows 2008 server (Server_B) from another W2k8 server (Server_A) I receive the following error:  "When attempting to start the Data Collector Set the following system error occurred:  No data to return."