OS X :: 7 Pass Secure Erase - Good Enough To Return Hard Drive?
Jan 16, 2009
So I may have one of the Seagate hard drives that are failing badly. Haven't heard back from Seagate to see if my drive and firmware is bad, but since I just bought the drive, I'm thinking of returning it.I'm in the middle of a 7 Pass Secure erase on it (1TB). Do people feel comfortable returning a drive after doing that erase? Or should I just forget about it and destroy the drive and chalk it up to a loss?
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Dec 17, 2010
I try to securely erase big hard drive and Disk Utility in Tiger says Secure Erase. Pass 1 of 7. Estimated time 123 hours
Is this progress bar only for erase 1/7 or for all 7 passes (1-7/7)?
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Dec 14, 2010
I have to return m my Macbook to Apple, and they asked me to erase the hard drive. I booted from disk went into disk utilities select the Macintosh HD and did a 7 pass erase. But it says in the stats (appear at the bottom) that there is still 6 folders, 425 MB space used and 2 files. Should it not say 0? I am unsure if I have done this correctly.
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Mar 7, 2008
I have a MacBook Pro and am going to sell it to upgrade to one of the newer MacBook Pro's. What is the best way to securely erase it before selling it? I have a lot of work data that I don't want to chance anyone being able to recover. In the past I had a windows program which conformed to DOD security for erasing. Is there anything like that I can do to securely erase my mac hard drive?
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Apr 25, 2012
I want to start afresh on my HD, i.e. reinstall from original disks and use Disk Utility to secure erase (via Erase & Install).I've read articles about pros and cons + how to do it. So I think I know how to do everything.However, from my reading I gather that Zero Erase is a single pass random erase whereas 7 Pass is secure erase (and there is a 3 Pass secure erase option nowadays)?That got me wondering - does 7 Pass secure erase make 7 x single passes over the entire disk?If it does, then when the blue bar has extended a bit over a third of the way across the progress monitor (that little bar that indicates time left) it should have made 3 passes, which would be equivalent to 3 pass secure erase?Is that an option?Is it possible to stop part way through an erase (which is part of E & I)? My original disks 1 and 2 have OS X 10.4, with OS X 10.5 included as complimentary 3rd disk (because OS X 10.5 was just released at that time).I gather I need to erase with disk 1, then install disks 1 + 2, then install OS X 10.5.
Info:
MacBookPro3,1, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 15"/ 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo/ 2GB/ 120GB
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Jun 24, 2009
Unfortunately I'm having to return my new Mac Pro, one month old. It has logic board problems. Kudos to Apple for their first suggestion. Anyway, I have 4 internal 1TB drives that I need to zero out. One zero pass on one drive takes 3+ hours. I would like to do a 7 pass on each drive, but that would take four days (90 hours) by my count before I could ship it back. And I want my new Mac asap!
Question? The most each drive contained was 500GB's. Can I do a zero pass on a drive and stop it approximately halfway through (hit Skip button) and then repeat the (half) process over again as often as I desire. Will my half used drives and/or data be zeroed out multiple times. If so this would save me many hours of zeroing out half empty drives! In short, what effect does a partial zero pass have on a hard drive?
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May 9, 2012
I cannot understand why I am unable to reinstall my Mac OS X installation disk 1 after performing a 7 pass erase. I kept the installation disk in the computer because iMac would not allow me to eject it. Plus I needed the installation disk in my computer to perform the erase in Disk Utility. did I erase the entire installation disk?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
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Dec 28, 2010
My hard drive crashed so before I sell the laptop, I heard I should do a "7 pass sweep". I'm not sure how to do this from the OS install disk though
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Apr 9, 2012
I have an external hard drive that I use to use with my old PC . On the external hard drive box it says its compatible with both windows and Max os x. I can pass files from my external hard drive to Mac but I cannot pass files from my MacBook Air to my external hard drive. No messages comes up or anything explain why it simply doesnt allow me to do so. What can I do?
Info:
MacBook Air
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Mar 26, 2012
My external hard drive was accidentally unplugged without ejecting. Now when I plug it in, it read only. I can copy files from it but not to it. Is there a way to reinstate write access without losing my data?
Info:MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)
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Sep 10, 2009
I swapped out my stock 160GB HDD for a 500GB WD HDD a year ago and put the old HDD into an enclosure. I guess I didn't screw it in tight enough and after jostling around a move or two, I just plugged it in to clear the clicking sound of a crashed drive. I can't even mount it onto my computer, so I pretty sure it's gone. My question is: I was about to take it to Best Buy to put in their electronic recycling bin, when I wondered if whatever data that was on there is secure, and if there's another step I should be taking before disposing of it properly.
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Aug 5, 2010
How do I do a secure erase (zero out data) on a Time Capsule?
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Feb 29, 2012
About a week ago I enabled FV1. Overnight, the encryption and deletion of the original folder appeared to complete.However, I now have a never ending 'Secure Erase' process showing up in Activity monitor. By never-ending, I mean its always there, although as far as I can tell the secure erase process finished days ago (and surely, on 54GB home folder, it shouldn't take this long anyway). In any case, Finder shows my disk space as freed already.I'm not experiencing any lag in the system, no increased fan speed or temp; in fact, the only way I know its happening is because it
i. appears in AM and Top
ii. it strips the life out of my battery when I'm not on AC Power.
I've tried re-booting to no effect. I've even tried killing the process but it just restarts itself.In Finder from within Snow Leopard, I see two home folder images. There is one with a home icon that appears to be an alias. 'Get Info' says it has 0MB size. There is another 'no access' folder whose size is indeterminate, as Finder never completes the 'Calculating' process.However, looking at these same two folders from Lion (on another partition), the folder with the home icon shows up as a 54GB sparse bundle. The folder with no access remains inaccessible and of indeterminate size.The issue is not critical. If the worst comes to the worst I can wipe this disk and re-install from a clone, but I'd rather find a better solution, if possible.
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Oct 21, 2008
If I clear free space on my hard drive the OS is on the hard drive will still be fine. Also will it get rid of all my sensitive data that was not erased through secure erase.
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Jun 6, 2006
I am going to be selling my trusty 12" PowerBook G4 to a friend soon, and putting the money I get from that towards a last revision 15" PowerBook G4. After I transfer my data from the 12" to the 15", I want to completely and securely erase my hard drive. The thing is, I don't know how to do this! I've never formatted/erased a hard drive before.
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Sep 1, 2009
I am using a macbook with an Intel Core 2 Duo (about two years old) and I am running leopard (10.5.8).
I have been using a Western Digital 250GB External Hard Drive with a firewire connection to utilize Time Machine for the past 6 months. All was going reasonably well until recently. (It would occasionally get stuck backing up and I would have to restart my computer and then backup again, but otherwise ok)
Last week I turned my computer on and it didn't recognize the drive. It gave me the "Initialize" "Ignore" option screen. I tried everything before I tried erasing it, but eventually I decided to lose all of that backed up data and just erase the drive and start from scratch. (I backed up on a different drive prior to trying this.)
Anyway, now when I go into Disk Utility and click on the Erase tab and then try to erase the drive (doesn't matter which erase option I choose) it says it is unable to erase the drive. If it is plugged in w/the Firewire cable then it gives me an "Invalid Argument" error. If it is plugged in with the USB cable, it gives me a input/output failure error.
Does anyone know if I can fix this drive? Any ideas as to what may have caused the problem in the 1st place. Months ago I accidently unplugged the drive without ejecting, but it worked for for a long time after that.
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Oct 29, 2009
I'm in a bind. I want to sell my MacBook Pro, but my dad threw away the installation DVDs that would allow me to erase the hard drive. What's the best option here? I was thinking that I could purchase the upgrade version of Leopard on Ebay since it's cheaper than the full version of snow leopard... but would that allow me to erase the hard drive?
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Jun 10, 2010
Is there anyway to erase my hard drive on my old broken mbp? (fried logic board) I want to sell the whole unit, but feel that the only thing i could do is take out the hard drive and sell everything else. Id prefer to not have to dismantle my mbp as it is somewhat time consuming. Is there a way to erase it within the mac?
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Jun 28, 2012
How do I erase my hard drive? In Utility>Disk Utility, but the only option highlighted is "Erase Free Space".
Info:
MacBook (13-inch Mid 2007), Mac OS X (10.5.8)
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May 8, 2012
I am running Lion on a fairly new iMac 21.5 (bought it last September). Apparently I have changed the Empty Trash method to Secure Erase. I really do not need this nor do I want it as it takes forever to empty the trash. How can I get back to the old method of just emptying the trash?
Info:
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)
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Jun 4, 2010
I have a mac I want to sell. How can I be sure that all of my private data is completely erased? Does a fresh install (complete) of OS X work?
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Jul 7, 2010
Is there any reason to erase hard drive and do a new install other than selling mac or new os?
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Feb 1, 2012
I want to erase everything on my hard drive as I want to give it away to someone. It has Lion on it.
I tried to erase using Disk Utility but the disks were grayed out. I have saved all the data on another disk so I can completely erase the drive.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.2)
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Mar 5, 2012
If Apple erases the hard drive for you when you recycle an old emac with them or must I do it myself. How is this done?
Info:
eMac (ATI Graphics), Mac OS X (10.3.x)
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Mar 25, 2012
I can't seem to find any instructions online about how to do this, step by step. Want to make sure all personal data is erased. I'm interested in performing a full format that at the very least zeros out the data on disk.
Info:
Power Mac G5, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Mar 28, 2012
Macbook OS X 10.5.8 and a WD 10EAVS 1TB External Hard Drive. That's all. I was given this by a fellow student on campus who was graduating. So I want to use this to store my iTunes Library (my Macbook's hard drive ran out of space). Here's what I do:
- Macbook is turned on and running
- I plug the external hard drive into a working outlet --> Hard drive turns on
- I plug the external hard drive into the mac using a USB connection --> Disk Insertion Error message: the disk you insterted was not readable by this computer
- It is not readable so I open it in Disk Utility (the hard drive is listed/recognized)
- I attempt to erase and/or partition the hard drive in order to format it in Mac OS Extended OR Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but I get one of these two messages: "Disk Erase failed with the error: File system formatter failed." OR "Disk Erase failed with the error: The underlying task reported failure on exit."
I attempted to look up what these mean or how to fix the problem but nothing is really working. I was able to format the hardware line to MS-DOS (FAT) and the sub-line as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but I don't even know if that's right or not.Basically, I need my computer to recognize this hard drive whenever I plug it in and to run smoothly as "extra space" to store my music on.I haven't had A LOT of experience with external hard drives but enough to get things done. But this problem is a killer.
Info:
mac book, Mac OS X (10.5.6)
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Sep 26, 2009
I want to carbon copy my bootable external drive to my main internal bootable hard drive so I tried to use Disk Utility to erase it but it will indicate that it failed and can't unmount. When I tried to manually unmount by dragging it to the trash it indicated that it is in use. I can't understand why it's in use since I booted from the external drive which I wanted to the copy to the internal drive.
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Aug 26, 2009
When installing Snow Leopard, will it erase my hard drive and force me to start all over or will it just update the software and keep everything the way it is on my Mac now?
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Apr 4, 2010
Very new wth mac. Got my first power mac G5 running OS x 10.5.8. I want to add second hard drive. I took the 320GB hard drive out of my Dish Network HD DVR receiver. Tried to erase the data from the drive by using Disk Utility and did not go through. It detect the drive but show 0 byte. Does anyone know what can I do?
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Apr 13, 2010
I recently had a problem with bootcamp so I tried to use time machine to backup my Macbook Pro. However it made an attempt to erase my HD so I immediately pulled out the cables and shutdown the program. However my disk is now "not readable by this computer" I have attempted a rebuild with diskwarrior but with no success. How to get my disk working again without having to format it?
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