do I need to disable file vault to reinstall catalina?

I am recycling my MacBook Air Catalina installed. I signed off of iCloud and iTunes etc, but I did not know to disable File Vault. I was able to erase the disc and reinstall to the point where it is asking me now the Time Zone etc upon restart. Does that mean I was successful and the new user can put in their information and use the computer? Is my data safely erased? Can I now return my MacBook Air for recycling or do I need to redo everything over and disable File Vault etc.?

Thanks.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 4, 2021 10:57 AM

Top-ranking reply

Encryptor5000

Level 5

7,662 points

Posted on Jan 4, 2021 5:51 PM

Yes - you did everything correctly. In fact, leaving FileVault on actually increased your security and made it impossible to recover the previous data.

FileVault simply scrambles the data on your startup disk so that your password is required to unscramble it. Erasing the drive with FileVault enabled did the following:

The data on the drive remained scrambled;
The underlying keys needed to unscramble the data were destroyed. This renders your data permanently scrambled and impossible to recover.
The drive was reformatted with a new empty filesystem (presumably APFS).

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do I need to disable file vault to reinstall catalina?

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