erasing harddrive on old (2008) and unused imac desktop

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Bjtz2019 Author

Level 1

8 points

erasing harddrive on old (2008) and unused imac desktop

I have an old (2008?) iMac desktop which I stopped using a year or so ago. I’d like to take it to an electronic recycling center but am worried about data left on hard drive. Should I be worried? If so, what should I do? Thank you.

Posted on Feb 4, 2020 7:49 AM

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Answer 1

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den.thed

Level 10

82,114 points

Feb 4, 2020 8:05 AM in response to Bjtz2019

Some options include,

starting up from the original Disc 1 that came with the computer and using Disk Utility to Erase the Hard Drive.
starting up from an external drive with a compatible OS X and using Disk Utility to Erase the Hard Drive.
starting up from a Retail Snow Leopard DVD and using Disk Utility to Erase the Hard Drive.
using Target Disk Mode from a second Mac to Erase the Hard Drive.
opening up the iMac and removing the Hard Drive.

Personally I remove their Hard Drives with a little help from > https://www.ifixit.com/Device/iMac_Intel

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