I am recycling my iMac and I want to factory reset everything or ensure everything is erased but I keep on going in circles. I’ve been to the disk utility to erase but the button is grayed out and I am only able to erase free space and not the entire HD. What am I doing wrong?
You need to startup from the original OS X install disc that came with that iMac or another drive. Then go to Utilities > Disk Utility and Erase the HD.
You need to startup from the original OS X install disc that came with that iMac or another drive. Then go to Utilities > Disk Utility and Erase the HD.
Try restarting in the Recovery Partition, Command + R on startup and then open Disk Utility and format there. If that fails you have 2 alternatives, buy a Snow Leopard DVD (I still see them on E-Bay) and start from the disc and then format. Option 2 is to use another Mac, connect using Target Disk Mode and let the other Mac wipe your 10.6.8 Mac. Other than that, remove the HD and smash it with a sledgehammer.
2 other ways to erase the HD are,
The only other option, involves opening up the iMac and physically removing the HD.
I don’t have the original disc. Any other way?
Thanks guys! I’m going to just take out the HD and destroy.
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Factory reset iMac on Mac 10.6.8
