Mac permanent eraser how to#
Mac permanent eraser full#

(For the examples in this article, IвЂ™ll be using a flash drive, but the display is the same for hard drives as well.) YouвЂ™ll see your MacвЂ™s startup drive, and any other drives connected to it. Launch Disk Utility itвЂ™s in the Utilities folder in your Applications folder. Whether itвЂ™s a hard drive in an older Mac or an external hard drive, if itВ is accessible, you can use Disk Utility to securely erase it.

Mac permanent eraser how to#

How to securely erase a hard driveД®ven though all new Macs these days come with SSDs, or flash storage (which IвЂ™ll discuss below), there are still plenty of hard drives in use today. So the next best thing is to securely erase them. Of course, you can keep every hard drive and flash drive youвЂ™ve ever owned to reduce the chances of the above happening, but after a while this method starts taking up a lot of space. Also think of photos, videos, chats and again email contents that may include sensitive and personal content that can be used to blackmail you or destroy your reputation. Your browser history, auto-saved names and passwords in your browser, email contents, and sensitive documents like bank statements and tax returns, are all very valuable to someone whoВ knows how to use it against you. Hackers are always looking for ways to get personal data to access bank accounts, to find user name / password pairs, that may be reused with other accounts, and to collect data to use in identity theft. Why is the data on your drive valuable to hackers? In this article, IвЂ™ll explain how to securely erase all sorts of drives: hard drives, flash drives, and SSDs. Whenever you dispose of a Mac, or an external drive, you should securely erase it to ensure that no one can harvest data from it. If you use an external drive for, say, your music and video libraries, then this isnвЂ™t the case, but if you use an external drive for backups, there thereвЂ™s lots of sensitive data on it.

Mac permanent eraser full#

Your MacвЂ™s drive is full of sensitive data: all your emails, contacts, private documents, and more.

Your Mac, and any external drives you use, may contain important personal data.

How To How to Securely Erase Data from Your Mac and External Drives