Will factory reset alone make my hard disk recovery impossible on my MacBook?

alwaysmoreinfo wrote:

Does not answer my question.

Just because it erases, doesn’t mean they can not be recovered.

And while the SSD may handle files differently, I have not seen any information that actually states the files are unrecoverable once they are properly wiped for security purposes.

I am looking for definitive information stating yes or no and explanation of why?

I am fairly surprised no one seems to want to answer that question. My SSD has been around for 11 years and the lack of information is surprising.

Given your concerns, you will want to seriously consider shredding this Mac. That (mostly) eliminates the concerns. I’m aware of sites that then buried, concreted, and guarded the resulting slag. But those sites can also have unusual requirements.

As for the common cases, follow the Apple-provided decommissioning instructions:

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

Going further into the weeds, err, into the technical details, you will hopefully have had storage encryption enabled, which means the discussion about erasure is moot. Once the storage keys are gone, the data is inaccessible. Mac with T2 and later encrypts internal storage by default, and it was optional on Macs prior to T2. Clobber the keys, clobber any chance of accessing the data.

If you did not have storage encryption enabled, then the erasure procedure provided by Apple clears the contents of the storage, outside of remnant data such as whatever storage sectors might have partially failed and been replaced with a “spare”.

With an SSD, whenever a file is deleted, the storage is erased just as quick as the SSD can manage that, as the sector must be erased before re-use. There just isn’t the same concept of data remanence as exists on HDDs. (And as described in at least some of the linked replies below, the sectors are also mapped dynamically as part of wear leveling, which means attempts at overwrites are not at going to work as they did on older HDDs worked.)

If shredding is not your preference, but you want better certainty, you could erase (zero) the entirety of the storage, then go looking for anything non-zero data when he SSD is accessed from a different computer using Target Disk Mode, too.

For some of the previous decommissioning-related and erasure-related discussions around here:

• Full Disk Encryption - Apple Community
• What is a good SSD free space wipe applic… - Apple Community
• Is there good BleachBit analog for Mac OS… - Apple Community
• Zeroing an SSD make sense? - Apple Community
• how do i securely erase free space on Cat… - Apple Community
• https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8505121
• Where is SECURE ERASE FREE SPACE in El Ca… - Apple Community

alwaysmoreinfo wrote:

Am giving away MacBook Pro.

SSD had much personal information.

Does factory reset alone make hd recovery impossible?

Follow these instructions:

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

alwaysmoreinfo wrote:

Does not answer my question.

Just because it erases, doesn’t mean they can not be recovered.

And while the SSD may handle files differently, I have not seen any information that actually states the files are unrecoverable once they are properly wiped for security purposes.

I am looking for definitive information stating yes or no and explanation of why?

I am fairly surprised no one seems to want to answer that question. My SSD has been around for 11 years and the lack of information is surprising.

I answered the question. The new owner of the computer will not have access to previously stored data if you follow the instructions in the link I provided. If you have top secret government data on the computer then follow the instructions provided by your government. If you are so concerned follow MrHoffman's advice to shred the computer. Millions of computers transfer ownership following the advice provided in the link without any data being compromised.