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erasing hard drive

Help! I am preparing to recycle my MacBook from 2002 (!) and I am trying to erase the hard drive. I have backed up everything on an external drive, signed out of iCloud and iTunes. I am in the Disk Utility and when I click on the hard drive it won't give me an option to erase.....Any easier way to do this? Do I have to erase the free space first? The MacBook is soooo old, it takes DAYS to back up and erase free space. Not very tech savvy so any help is appreciated!

Thanks!

Posted on Jul 26, 2020 8:20 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 27, 2020 10:08 AM

Hmm. Sorry that didn't work.


Give the following article a try: What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac - Apple Support


Note that step 7 in this article will not work for pre-2012 Macs. Instead you will need to insert the compatible Mac OS X install DVD, and then, restart with either the <C> or <option> key held down. Then use the Disk Utility to erase the internal drive, and finally, install a fresh copy of the OS.

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 27, 2020 10:08 AM in response to katharine24

Hmm. Sorry that didn't work.


Give the following article a try: What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac - Apple Support


Note that step 7 in this article will not work for pre-2012 Macs. Instead you will need to insert the compatible Mac OS X install DVD, and then, restart with either the <C> or <option> key held down. Then use the Disk Utility to erase the internal drive, and finally, install a fresh copy of the OS.

erasing hard drive

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