Computer sold, but how do I do a wipe without the cds?

How do I clean the macbook out without the cds??

 

It's easier to do the right thing here, than the alternatives.
Short of removing the HDD, you can create a new admin user, then delete the old admin. Then comb the system for personal stuff.

or....

Buy a replacement System Disk. The new owner needs it too.

 

I DON'T recommend doing that because the next user can get back most of your information if you manually delete it and don't do it properly.

Also you'll probably miss something.

Also you could just take it to the Apple Store, they would probably reinstall the OS if you asked them too.

 

I dont have an apple store, or cds. I live way south in texas.. lol any software that can wipe personal data? They had one on windows that would really wipe the HD and leave the OS alone.

 

You can buy an install lion, do a fresh install and wipe everything, but I don't know any other way of doing it without the CDs.

 

Even with a secure delete after deleting the other user?

 

Not sure what a secure delete is. I'm sure there are some ways to securely delete something that are harder/impossible to recover.

If you click "move to trash" and then "delete" your information can be recovered by a crafty person.

Don't do that before you sell your computer and/or if you have some kind of personal information.

All you did is tell the hard drive to dereference that data. The OS doesn't go in and replace all of those bits with new bits, it just tells the hard drive that it can over write that data with new information. If it did overwrite it would take as long to write a 3gb file as it does to delete it, but deletions happens in milli seconds.

When you reformat the drive it changes how the drive analyzes and interprets the bits on it. That makes it almost impossible to recover data. The format is just how the OS interpets the information, trying to find data on a drive without formatting is like trying to find a book in a library, EXCEPT you don't have a computer to look it up in, the books aren't organized in any sort of order, and your library has trillions of books.

 

^ There is an option which lets you secure delete your trash. I think it is under trash options or you can enable it under preferences.

 

If it overwrites it with just zeroes, then your safe against 99% of casual information thieves. The FBI however can dismantle your drive and look for what was written on it before. Hard Drives are magnetic, this works by using special equipment to measure the magnetic tracks. That requires special equipment. So your probably good there. Unless you sell it to someone with EE/ECE experience. They can probably do the same.

According to the Internet it uses the 35 pass algorithm. If it does that then the FBI can't really recover it, maybe MI6. It overwrites it multiple times so you can't even analyze the data by looking at the magnetic information on the drive. So your secure, but obviously its "too a point". The only real way to get more secure is to take the drive and turn it into plasma. There is probably zero chance of anybody bothering to use the drive to steal information however. Unless your working on a national defense project very few people need to go more secure.

However the biggest problem is the "human factor" if it does use the 35 pass algorithim, a secure delete algorithim is only as good as the person who uses it, if you miss something, you could have the best algorithim but it won't do it any good.

 

In that case, I don't think reinstalling lion by formatting would save one from the intelligence sleuths either.

 

Yeah that is true.

I just provided all the information I know. I think when you do the scan you can be helped by the formatting information on the drive, BUT I'm not expert here a all.

The formatting information has the address tables. So if you scanned a reformatted drive you just wouldn't have the address of anything. But since a computer is doing the scan it would just take more time I think.

So for the truly paranoid you would have to do a little bit more to securely wipe your disk then.

 

I think deleting your account is a perfect option if you're like me. I only have Steam games, a few ISO's, and word docs on my laptop. Nothing important.

 

True to a point, but you also have all of your browser saved information. My friend did the following. He created a new admin account on my Mac using root access. He used this admin account to access my chrome browser data. If you have this browser data running on the same computer with the same mac address you can use this browser data to access all website login information, cookies etc. Basically after 30 minutes of google and other stuff he was able to relogin to my facebook even though I had logged out just using that chrome browser data.

Quite some trouble to change someone's facebook, but still it is possible. For people who want to do more then post a funny facebook status, that is a decent amount of access to personal information.

So if someone recovers that browser file they can relogin to websites.

 

But that is because you already had your account on the mac, right? If one deletes their home folder securely, then a couple runs of zeros and ones are made on the "deleted data", which would make it harder to access the said information. Of course, it is safe to do a clean restore, as you might not have to look for apps that you installed (legally / illegally) that you wouldn't want to give away.

 

Secure delete should be fine for most people. Non secure delete = not advisable, at least in my opinion.

 

I never save my passwords in browser, but I know a lot of people do. My brother does, so it's really easy to mess with his Facebook

 

Download any Linux distro...like Ubuntu for convenience. Boot from CD by holding the 'C' key at startup and wipe the drive from there. You can download your favourite app from sourceforge while on the Live CD and do a multi-pass low level format of your Macintosh HDD.

 

I think the person who bought the computer expects Mac OS X installed on the drive

 

He asked how to wipe the drive without the OSX disc. That's how I would go about it.

Whatever he wants to do afterwards, ( ie: reinstall OSX or not ) , is his prerogative.