How can I be sure EVERYTHING has been erased?

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Level 1

4 points

How can I be sure EVERYTHING has been erased?

Hello! I've gone through the instructions here: Use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac - Apple Support and here: What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac - Apple Support and it's back (it looks like) to the factory, out-of-the-box state. How can I be sure that all personal data and other things are really cleaned off? Since when I power on now it's back to the out-of-the-box-state, I didn't want to go through the set up just to check, then have to go through the erase steps again.

Thank you!

Posted on Jun 4, 2023 2:22 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

145,269 points

Jun 4, 2023 4:24 PM in response to BleunSam

features 256 GB [or more] of 4 Lane PCIe-based flash storage.

ERASE with TRIM enabled returns every block to the FreeList and within seconds, the blocks are re-combined into SuperBlocks (which scrambles the block numbers) and the SuperBlocks are pre-erased for new data.

No survivors.

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Answer 2

MrHoffman

Level 10

160,553 points

Jun 4, 2023 2:39 PM in response to BleunSam

SSDs work very differently from hard disks, and old-time “disk scavenging” just isn’t feasible.

If you’ve followed the standard setup procedures by enabling and using File Vault storage encryption and then followed the storage reset procedures, what was once securely encrypted is now inaccessible as the keys are gone and the encrypted storage then was erased and the use of SSD also then means that each storage sector is erased.

But if your data is particularly valuable or particularly sensitive, you can choose to shred the hardware.

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