Hello, When you go to re-format your hard disk drive, you should be able to find an option to “safely erase” it. This is assuming you have a hard disk and not an SSD. The save erase function does not just mark all sectors as being empty, but also makes several write passes over each sector of the disk to ensure it can not be brought to a disk forensics shop for recovery If you can’t find this option directly, feel free to ask Apple or somebody on this list can do some research. I haven’t tried to do this in five years, and disk utility did have some of its functionality removed to make in more intuitive / simpler to use. Best Wishes,
Jonathan Cohn > On Feb 28, 2018, at 6:03 AM, Paul Hopewell <hopew...@hopewell.org.uk> wrote: > > Hi Andrew and Nickus, > Many thanks for your help. I hope to sell or give away the old Mac but if no > one wants it I will have it recycled. > I am a bit paranoid about security and so want to be sure that all my private > data is really gone before moving the Mac on. So can I use the disk utility > part of the recovery manager to securely erase my hard disk and then use the > Install Mac OS part of the recovery manager to re-install El Capitan? Or if I > just use the Install Mac OS part of the recovery manager does that also > reformat my hard disk so that I do not need to use the disk utility? > Best regards… > > Paul Hopewell > > -- > The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries > list. > > If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if > you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or > moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. > > Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: > mk...@ucla.edu and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at > caraqu...@caraquinn.com > > The archives for this list can be searched at: > http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: mk...@ucla.edu and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
