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Reset And Wipe Your Mac Before Selling – Are you planning to give your MacBook Pro to someone else? If you are considering selling your MacBook Pro computer, it is essential to ensure that all the data has been removed. This will ensure no one gains access to your personal or confidential information. Not only does that ensure refreshing the system, but it also protects your privacy in the sense of resetting the device for a new user.
To wipe the MacBook Pro, many simply format the hard disk drive. However, that is not enough, as the data is still recoverable. Anyone with good skills can retrieve your sensitive data for personal use. So you would instead follow this article and then be a victim of data theft.
Methods to Reset And Wipe Your Mac Before Selling
Here are the steps to ensure that everything is wiped clean and nothing can be recovered.
Method 1. Removing/Erasing Everything from your MacBook Pro
To start the cleaning process, you must ascertain that your MacBook Pro computer is connected to the internet. Here, we are talking about removing every trace of information or data from your Pro computer. So, it is not just the hard disk we will erase. We will get rid of everything
Also, if you are reselling your MacBook Pro, you will also want to reinstall the OSX. No one will buy a computer without the operating system. It will require you to restore the device to the factory settings first. Again, you will need an internet connection for this process.
The entire process may take a while. So, before you start, charge your computer. It would be better to keep it plugged into the power source throughout the process.
Let’s get started with the wiping process first. Here are the steps you need to follow:
- Click on the Apple menu on your Mac (the one with the Apple logo)
- Select Restart. This will reboot your computer, and the startup will be launched again. But, you don’t want to reboot your computer normally. You need the unique startup screen.
- When you click on the restart, Mac will shut down first, and when it begins to reboot again, press down the CMD and R keys simultaneously on the grey screen. Remember that you will get a very small window to take this action. So, be attentive when it is rebooting. If you miss the window, you must restart the computer again.
- You will now see the Utility startup for your OSX. From here, you can make many system-related changes and modify the settings. However, it is best not to experiment with the options you are unaware of. It may cause a problem.
- Choose Disk Utility on the next screen
- You should be able to see the option Startup disk now (this may be labelled differently on different versions of OSX, but they are about start-up)
- Click on the OS on the left and then choose Erase (one of the tabs on the screen.)
- Locate the Format option. You will also need to ensure that Mac OS Extended has been chosen (as shown in the image above).
- Confirm your action by clicking on Erase button.
This process may take a while depending upon the volume of the data saved on your hard disk.
Method 2. Reinstalling the Operating System
Once everything has been erased from your Mac computer, you will want to make it reusable again by installing the OSX. Without the operating system, your computer is no good. Here is what you need to do to reinstall the operating system and restore your Mac to the original factory settings:
- Quit Disk Utility after erasing everything from the computer.
- When your Mac restarts now, it will automatically direct you to the ‘macOS Utilities’ screen from where you can reconfigure your computer.
- Choose ‘Reinstall macOS’ and click Continue.
- On the subsequent screens, you will need to confirm a few things. In most cases, you don’t need to make changes on the confirmation screens unless you are looking for something specific.
- To reinstall the OS, you will require an internet connection. The factory settings are stored in the Apple servers, not at the client-end.
This will reconfigure your Mac’s OS and make it new.
Method 3. Erase Everything from MacBook Pro with SafeWiper for Disk
As we always said in our article, the simple deletion will not be far enough to wipe your Macbook. The data is still on your hard drive. Mac and easily be recovered by some data recovery. So, you must permanently erase sensitive data before you sell, donate, give away, lend or throw away your Mac/device, even before you send your device to be repaired. Here we highly recommend using SafeWiper for Disk program to erase everything from your Macbook and make the data unrecoverable!
SafeWiper for Disk is a powerful yet professional Mac wipe software that can wipe any data from the hard drive, external hard drive, SD card, memory card, or USB drive. It can even format and erase data from inaccessible hard drives or devices.
Feature 1: Erase Files/Folders on y our Macbook’s hard drive.
If you have some specific sensitive documents, images, or other files that need to be wiped from your Mac, just select the first feature. It can permanently erase selected files or folders from Mac machines or storage media under Mac OS.
Feature 2: Wipe Hard Drive on your MacBook
This mode can help you wipe everything on your local hard drive on your MacBook. It can completely wipe the entire Mac hard drive or storage device to destroy and erase all existing data, deleted/lost data and traces
Feature 3. Wipe Free Space from your Macbook Hard Drive
This feature can permanently erase deleted/lost data and traces without affecting the existing files or data.
Verdict
If you need to erase everything on MacBook Pro, only formatting the hard drives separately is not a good choice. It is best to use the Disk Utility to wipe clean everything. This way, the data will be rendered unrecoverable, and your personal information will remain safe. You can reinstall the OS afterwards. I hope you like our article about How to Reset And Wipe Your Mac Before Selling. If you like it, share it with your friends, family or loved ones.