Erasing Macbook for re-sale

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Hi everyone

I was aghast to find my Macbook Pro (purchased Novemeber 2011) didn't come with a start-up disk for OS X Lion. Checking the net, it seems as though you need the disk in order to erase the hard drive.

However I've deleted everything manually, erased the trash, applications, web history, reset safari, ensured no data is stored on websites and all that. I also deleted my admin account and created a new Administrator account.

But then I discovered Disk Utility is already present without the disk, so I ran the erase hard-drive option 7x.

Is this 'enough'? By enough, I mean for re-sale to anybody who isn't a prodigious hacker. Or should I go to the apple store and use a disk?

Help would be much appreciated

James
 

chscag

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Is this 'enough'? By enough, I mean for re-sale to anybody who isn't a prodigious hacker. Or should I go to the apple store and use a disk?

Boot back to the Recovery Partition and run Disk Utility again to erase once more, only this time select secure erase three passes. Don't select any higher number than that or you'll be erasing the disk for several days. That will ensure not even a clever hacker can undelete any of your personal data unless he works for the FBI or NSA. :)
 
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Thanks guys. cwa107, that thread looks as though it is giving advice to people with the original start-up disk, which I'm lacking. I guess my question is that, by using the disk utility function to erase all the free space, am I covering myself adequately despite having no start-up disk?
 

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