Can't erase for recycling
I have an old Macbook (mid-2009) that will not allow me to do a clean erase/wipe clean. I intend to get rid of it before moving across the country. It is running El Capitan OS.
MacBook, OS X 10.11
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Does this laptop still boot into macOS either normally or into Safe Mode? If so, then I highly recommend you create a bootable macOS USB installer using the instructions in this Apple article so you have more options in case something goes wrong:
Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support
Also, before erasing the drive you should make sure to disassociate your accounts from this laptop by following the instructions in this Apple article (one of the steps will be to erase the drive):
What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac - Apple Support
If the drive on this laptop is an SSD, then just follow the instructions in the Apple article for preparing a Mac for sale. If the drive is a hard drive, then I suggest you first enable Filevault and let it finish encrypting before you erase the drive (it can take a while for Filevault to encrypt a hard drive). This will make sure that your personal data cannot be accessed after reinstalling macOS, otherwise you will need to write zeroes to the hard drive when you erase it so all your data is overwritten (Apple removed this feature from Disk Utility so I'm not sure if El Capitan has it or not since writing zeroes is not needed if using an SSD since SSDs work differently).
Unfortunately the Apple instructions for erasing a drive assumes the computer is using an SSD or has Filevault enabled. Just a simple erase of an unencrypted hard drive though will still leave your personal information on the drive where someone just needs to use a data recovery app to attempt to access some of the data you thought was deleted. When erasing a Filevaulted drive, you just need to select the physical drive to erase (does not require any password).