How do I wipe a hardrive on Mac laptop to the point of no file recovery?

[spiderman4321]

How do I wipe a hardrive on Mac laptop to the point of no file recovery? The files have been deleted within Mac osx but how do I delete the whole drive so everything beyond recovery but still run factory reset on Mac osx without the need for a older mac osx iso install.

 

[ferrarr]

Did you see this;

What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your Mac

and this;

Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings - Apple Support

Use Erase All Content and Settings to quickly and securely erase all of your settings, data, and apps, while maintaining the operating system currently installed.

support.apple.com

 

[krs]

and this;

Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings - Apple Support

Use Erase All Content and Settings to quickly and securely erase all of your settings, data, and apps, while maintaining the operating system currently installed.

support.apple.com

Does that provide the "secure" erase?
ie where the data is overwritten 7 times.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

How do I wipe a hardrive on Mac laptop to the point of no file recovery? The files have been deleted within Mac osx but how do I delete the whole drive so everything beyond recovery but still run factory reset on Mac osx without the need for a older mac osx iso install.

If the drive is a rotating disk hard drive, you simply choose the secure erase option in Disk Utility that erases your data and overwrites it with zeros as many times as you feel is necessary.

If your internal drive is an SSD, that approach is inappropriate, and is likely not even available in Disk Utility. The thing to do in that instance is to encrypt your hard drive to make the data on it inaccessible.

For a detailed discussion of this, see:

https://tidbits.com/2022/08/15/how-to-securely-erase-a-macs-ssd-or-hard-drive/

 

[ced89]

As far as I know, the utility provided by MacOS erases only the master key in the external chip (assuming you have a recent device), not the actual data on the disk, those will be just quickly zeroed.
This is considered safe for the current industry security standards and beyond.

NOTE: erasing an HDD is different from erasing an SSD/M2, but if you have a recent device, a simple factory reset is enough, it will erase the master key and goodbye to the data, if they were encrypted .

 

[Jimmysb]

Apple advice:

Use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac – Apple Support (UK)

How to erase (format) the built-in startup disk of an Intel-based Mac.

support.apple.com

or

Use Disk Utility to erase a Mac with Apple silicon – Apple Support (UK)

How to erase (format) the built-in startup disk of a Mac with Apple silicon.

support.apple.com

 

[krs]

Apple advice:

Use Disk Utility to erase an Intel-based Mac – Apple Support (UK)

How to erase (format) the built-in startup disk of an Intel-based Mac.

support.apple.com

This method doesn't seem to make a distinction on how to erase an Intel Mac with a rotary disk vs an SSD

 

[MacInWin]

This method doesn't seem to make a distinction on how to erase an Intel Mac with a rotary disk vs an SSD

Technically, it isn't "erasing" the disk, it's reformatting it. A reformatted RDHD might be recoverable, with some specific tools. A reformatted SSD cannot, due to the technology, although a forensic specialist could, I suppose, dump the contents and then try to reassemble it like a jigsaw puzzle, but that would be fabulously expensive and time consuming. And really all that needs to be done on an APFS drive is to encrypt it, then format it. The encryption will cover over the original data and the formatting will scramble the segments. Even if tools are used to un-scramble, all they get is encrypted segments.

With the new Apple Silicon Macs, it's even simpler. Just reformat. The contents of the storage are encrypted by default, with two keys if the user turns on File Vault, just one if not, but formatting destroys the keys, so the drive is unreadable.

 

[Jimmysb]

This method doesn't seem to make a distinction on how to erase an Intel Mac with a rotary disk vs an SSD

Sorry about that, just relaying Apple advice.

 

[krs]

Technically, it isn't "erasing" the disk, it's reformatting it.

Well, Apple calls it "erasing" in the title and throughout the article.
"Erasing" a drive that has been used consists of writing random 0's and 1's several times (which is what happens when one hits the "Erase" button in Disk Utility, and for that the drive has to be formatted.
So I don't understand your comment that the Apple article how to "erase" a drive is really an article about formatting a drive.
My comment about Apple not making a distinction between rotary drives and SSD's when it comes to erasing a drive stems from numerous comments in this forum to not "erase" an SSD by overwriting the data with 0's and 1's - that is exactly what the article is telling one to do, both with a rotary drive and an SSD on an Intel Mac, no distiction is made between the two types of drive.

 

[MacInWin]

So I don't understand your comment that the Apple article how to "erase" a drive is really an article about formatting a drive.

The first line in that article you linked says:

How to erase (format) the built-in startup disk of an Intel-based Mac.

And the instructions never mention writing 1s and 0s on the drive. I think you are thinking of "secure erase," which does do that and which is described here:

Erase and reformat a storage device in Disk Utility on Mac

In Disk Utility on your Mac, erase and reformat a storage device to use with a Mac.

support.apple.com

But note that in step 8 of the process, it says this:

Secure erase options are available only for some types of storage devices. If the Security Options button is not available, Disk Utility cannot perform a secure erase on the storage device.

and in the footnote:

Note: With a solid-state drive (SSD), secure erase options are not available in Disk Utility. For more security, consider turning on FileVault encryption when you start using your SSD drive.

So, that is why I said what I said.