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I want to erase my iMac (2010) disk running High Sierra as I am recycling my iMac. I followed the steps on "What to do before you sell, give away or trade in you Mac" published June 04, 2020. At step 7, erase your hard drive, after selecting the Macintosh HD in sidebar the Erase button will not highlight. Only First Aid and Partition buttons in tool bar are highlighted, Erase, Restore, Unmount buttons are not highlighted (made available).
iMac 27″, macOS 10.13
You need to be booted from another drive or from a macOS installer so you can erase the drive. Click on the link within Step #7 to get more information on how to erase the drive.
I recommend you first enable Filevault on the hard drive and let the process complete so when you go to erase the drive none of your data will be accessible when you erase the drive. Just using Disk Utility to "erase" the drive will not destroy the data, but it will destroy access to all the data if Filevault has been enabled & the encryption process has completed.
You may want to create a bootable macOS USB installer using these instructions:
You need to be booted from another drive or from a macOS installer so you can erase the drive. Click on the link within Step #7 to get more information on how to erase the drive.
I recommend you first enable Filevault on the hard drive and let the process complete so when you go to erase the drive none of your data will be accessible when you erase the drive. Just using Disk Utility to "erase" the drive will not destroy the data, but it will destroy access to all the data if Filevault has been enabled & the encryption process has completed.
You may want to create a bootable macOS USB installer using these instructions:
Thanks for the information. I did use FileVault based on your suggestion and it took about 4 days to encrypt the Macintosh HD drive. I followed the instructions and did erase the disk. I appreciation the encryption suggestion and I feel better about recycling my iMac now.
Thank you.
You're welcome. Apple's instructions make a lot of assumptions that don't always apply to all users especially those involving older systems using hard drives. I'm glad you were concerned enough to inquire about the proper method of securely destroying your personal data on the old Mac since most people never give it a second thought.
Erasing Macintosh HD problem
