01-21-2011, 11:51 PM

Hi,

I have to take my late 2007 MBP in since it suffers from the blank screen of death (failed Nvidia chip). Normally I'd just backup my data, pop the DVD in and reformat/reinstall OS X - but I can't because I have no monitor and the 2nd display port doesn't work either.

What I do have is VNC (remote access) since it boots up fine, just without a display. So if I log in from my PC, I can see/interact with my MBP. What I'd like to do is wipe as much as possible while still maintaining functionality of OS X. I've used Superduper to make a backup of my entire drive already, then I plan to make a new temporary user, then delete my /Users/MyMainUser directory. That should take care of most stuff, but is there anything else (temporary files, thumbnails, etc) that I can delete that might reside outside of that directory?

Thanks.

-TM

01-21-2011, 11:55 PM

If you are taking into Apple, I wouldn't bother... Apple has better things to be doing than going through the content of your HD, and apart from the fact that even if they wanted to, they are too busy to.

01-22-2011, 07:34 AM

I wouldn't worry about it a whole lot either.

But, if you've got stuff on there you just can't take a chance with, I'd probably create a new admin account, log into it and delete the old admin account. That will delete the data so that it is unrecoverable without tools. If you need to be sure, boot from the SD! backup, head into Disk Utility and use the erase free space option. (Can't use this option on the system partition you're booted to.)

01-22-2011, 10:27 PM

Unless you've got legions of child porn and torrented metallica albums, then I don't think you've got too much to fear about taking your machine to the apple store.