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Trading in my iMac 2014 for a new one. Was erasing the disc in recovery mode with disc utility. In the past, it asked how securely the wipe should be, but didn’t find that option with disc utility in Catilina. It went fast ( secure erasure in the past could take hours). Is it good, the way it is done now...or should I be looking for another solution before I send in the old iMac 🤔
Chatted with Apple online . They said that the multi pass Erasure was not offered through disc utility as an option any longer and the present wipe was secure. Nevertheless, I did run it several times, just to be sure😂
Chatted with Apple online . They said that the multi pass Erasure was not offered through disc utility as an option any longer and the present wipe was secure. Nevertheless, I did run it several times, just to be sure😂
Ok....that’s what I was looking to use...but it wasn’t popping up🤨 Where is it on the layout? I went back into recovery and disc utility...but didn’t see it🙁
I recall it being a little box at the bottom...where is it now?
Ok...got it back out, once again started up in recovery mode. Opened disc utilities. Show all devices. Has a fusion drive that can’t be erased, the Macintosh HD data and HD along with container...which can be erased, but in none of them does a box for security options appear🙁 Sorry to be such a pain, but a security option is not appearing on my machine running Catalina in recovery mode.
I do not have a secure option showing either; I noticed in your screenshot, it shows that you are booted from an external rather than Mac HD - that might be a difference? I did not have an external handy.
Also, as far as I know, there is no secure erase option for an SSD?
When I traded mine in (with an SSD), I decided to erase and reinstall the OS 3 times and I also tried to fill up the hard drive with some irrelevant movies every time (just to write over what was there previously). Took a little time, but I set it up and walked away. I felt better sending it in after that.
Hmm..yes, I saw your screenshot and you saw mine..not sure what to make of it all🤔 Seems in some cases it does appear, but not all🤔 I ran mine multiple times and it never appeared🙁 I wish it had, I would have felt more comfortable, despite assurances🥴 Thanks for your willingness to help😊
The best thing to do when wanting to securely erase a Mac which uses a hard drive is to first enable Filevault and let Filevault finish encrypting the drive. Once the drive is encrypted, then a simple erase is enough to destroy the Filevault encryption keys preventing access to any data on the drive.
It is possible to write zeroes to the hard drive using the Terminal command line utility "dd".
If you only have an SSD and TRIM is enabled (the default for an Apple SSD), then just erasing the SSD using Disk Utility is enough to have the SSD zeroed out immediately because all the blocks on the SSD have been marked deleted and TRIM resets those unused blocks to zeroes.
There is a way to utilize the built-in hardware secure erase feature of hard drives and many SSDs, but this requires a Linux boot disk and Linux utility to access this hardware feature of the drives. If you perform the other steps I mentioned here your data will be unrecoverable.
Thank you so much.😃 Although I have already done my best to clear it....and have sent it back to Apple; I think this is very helpful for the future! I have been used to the earlier disc utility offering a secure option whilst in recovery mode, or used a targeted erasure in earlier Mac’s with another computer, but those had been options that were clearly available and documented/supported for clearing the drive. This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, and seems to be poorly documented. I would have thought that instructions would have been forwarded by Apple with the other trade in materials. I guess with drives going to SSD’s rather disc drives, the point will be moot, but these are great techniques for others looking for secure wiping of drives before return or sale!! Thanks again!!😃
Some of Apple's documentation is quite poor and misleading. Plus most of Apple's documentation only pertains to the newer hardware and doesn't consider older hardware. And Apple makes a lot of assumptions which are not always correct. I'm sorry I didn't see your post earlier, but I've been quite busy the last few days.
Hopefully the information in this thread will be able to help someone else who is trying to do the same thing.
Did you click the Security Options button?
First, you need to select "Show All Devices" from the View menu.
You should have sent them my screen shot. 😎
You're welcome. Since we last spoke, I did a little exploring and as it turns out, Apple was partially correct. "Security Options" is still available for external drives but not internal drives.
How good is the erasure of the hard drive with disc utility in Catalina?
