We just boxed up my old Mac and it heads to charity Monday! This video was a big help. I encrypted (pre T2) and I feel so good knowing it's as good a job of cleaning that ssd as I can do. You even found the Apple guidelines for everything else and I appreciate that. Many Thanks

This was PERFECT! I love the in-depth explanation of formatting. Nice job and thank you!

Very well explained, this is important information, well done!

Really helpful and very clear, now I am assured - a huge thank you 👍

Again another awesome video. Thank you!!

I just recently sent my old early 2009 Mac mini back to Apple for recycling. I had El Capitan installed so I booted into recovery, ran disk utility and did a 7-pass erase of the Macintosh HD volume.

Great video, thanks a lot! 💜

Great video! fixed my problem

Excelente as always. I'm anal when it comes to wiping a computer I'm selling as I understand the risks of identity theft. What your video did was provide me with greater comfort that stealing data from an erased drive with a fresh OS installation would be a specialist activity that would be unlikely to be worth the effort.

very useful, thanks a lot 🙏🏻

I always make sure I have both an external hard drive and cloud backup prior to wiping/reinstall op sys. But that is just me. Typically I’m upgrading to a newer Mac (even MS software or Linux). Simplifies the new setup.

Pretty much knew this but still great as an extra reenforcement and a great video to save for future reference. not even sure what i did with my old Hewlard Packard back in 2012 thats when i got my first MacBook pro that i am still using. excited for my new 2021 MBPro to arrive next week supposedly, i ordered it 6 weeks ago it is due to arrive the 4/ 22 to 4/29. just got pushed out to 6/6 to 6/21 what i bought is 16" MBPro M1 Max with 32 Ram and 2 TB storage, hope to have it 10+ years without worrying about software and app upgrades or space. In 2012 i bought my 2012 MBPro 8GB Ram was biggest & i got it with 1TB Storage which was huge back then. I only have only used 592.92GB storage since 2012, the new one for me should be plenty big, although im almost thinking i should have got 4TB as i want to move that 600GB to the new 2021. As mentioned above, I'm still on a 15" 2012 MBPro, the 2021 MBPro M1 Max is actually lighter, slightly smaller with a larger screen. Excited for my new 2021 MBPro to arrive next week supposedly, i ordered it 6 weeks ago it is due to arrive the 4/ 22 to 4/29 just got delayed until 6/6/ to 6/21. what i bought is a 16" MBPro M1 Max with 32 Ram and 2 TB storage, hope to have it 10+ years like my 2012 MBPro without worrying about software and app upgrades or storage space. In 2012 i bought my 2012 MBPro 8GB Ram was biggest & i got it with 1TB Storage which was huge back then, I still only have used 592.92GB storage since 2012, The new one for me should be plenty big, im almost thinking i should have got 4TB as i want to move that 600GB from the 2012 to the new 2021. As mentioned above, I'm still on a 15" 2012 MBPro, the 2021 MBPro M1 Max is actually lighter, slightly smaller with a larger screen. THE 2021 is 19/64 inch thinner, 11/32 inch narrower, 3/64 inch less depth and 13/16th of a pound lighter with a 13/16" inch larger screen. The new 2021 compared to my old 2012 is basically slightly more than a 1/4 inch thinner, slightly less than 3/8 inch narrower, slightly less than a 1/16 inch front to back, slightly more than a 3/4 pound lighter with slightly more than a 3/4 inch larger screen. And they brought back the ports that i like and mag safe that i love. It is a win win for me. With all he improvements and bring backs it could not have been a better model, year and time to upgrade!! Absolutely Psyched!!!

I may end up watching this video again at some point in the future, as i plan on getting an M1 Mac Mini (base model with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD) as a temporary Mac until i am able to get a Mac Studio, or whatever i decide to get And then the Mac Mini may either go to a relative (i know that 256GB will be plenty of storage for them, one of the windows laptops they have has only 64GB of eMMC storage), or it may get sold

A very useful video tutorial today and it’s very important information! Thank you, Gary! 👏🏻❤️

Before getting rid of your old Mac, use it to try out all the cool things Gary explains how to do. Many people never get more capable on the use of their Mac because they don’t want to risk messing up their work and then needing to spend time and effort to get back to where they were before they messed up. That older Mac is still likely relevant so it can be your discovery tool without consequences. Get your older family members more computer savvy in this way.

In the case of the M1 situation what about external hard drives that had been formatted in the disk utility? Are those also encrypted by default? If not, then what way should I erase the drive to be secure?

Hey Gary, would you please provide me with your take on software updates on MacBooks or refer me to the video in which you do so? I have a 2021 macbook pro and would like to maximize its lifespan. I fear that, although today’s updates may be optimized for my computer, this will not always be the case, and such updates will be increasingly less beneficial and/or more negative. Thank you Gary.

Very helpful information. I have been anxious about it. I lost my 2012 iMac during a property dispute and i always wonder whether my data stayed safe or not. Before i had lost it though, coincidentally it wasn’t booting up n there was problem with the fusion drive. I was told to reformat the drive which i didnt do.. so most probably the drive’d hv been safe. My another question is, without having my osx password or appleid password, how easy is it for someone to reuse that imac. I haven’t heard from it within “find my”…. Isnt there any mechanism that stops any stranger to reset the imac n use it as new?

Hey Gary, I just upgraded my old drive on my macbook pro to an ssd. Somewhere i heard i need to make sure TRIM is turned back on. What's your opinion?

Hi Gary, I tried to reset my M1 MacbookPro have managed to delete something I shouldn't have, now I get the Exclamation Mark in a circle with a link to apple Restore. Could you possibly make a vid on how to restore an M1 MacbookPro using another computer with a data link and Apple Configurator? Going bananas here...

Thank You!! What about an older iMac with a spinner that won't mount? I can't access it at all. Even though I can use the iMac by connecting an external drive with OS Sierra installed, the internal drive is not seen. Can I just send the iMac to Apple to be recycled as is? Its an intel core 2 duo ...

Hi Gary just a few more questions. I have three older iMacs that need to go because I am selling my home and moving into a rental condo. My first one that I bought was in 2007, so I did what you said in the video and did the security pass at the highest level and I think it took a minimum of 12 hours or so. That’s the one that came with two disc that you would load in the side and I have everything that came with that in the box. I guess I should keep the keyboard because it’s a plug-in which is always nice to have. I’m feeling that one is ready to be taken to either Best Buy or Apple to get that off my hands because no one will buy that from me. Not sure if I trust Best Buy, an article years ago where they replaced a hard drive for someone and about three months later a guy in another state notified the owner of the old computer/hard drive that he just installed that hard drive in his computer and all the information was still on there. That made the newspapers back then. My other two iMacs are from 2013 which I think works great as a second monitor, but I’ll never use it because of lack of space, but I hate to just have it destroyed as well. Can still surf the Internet and everything else on that. But I have deleted everything and it’s in the box. :-) Now, the third iMac is the first one with the “ fusion drive“ from 2015 I believe? I’m assuming I would just delete that the same way as the older ones with the security wiping it clean for lack of better words. I don’t think I could get anything for that even though it’s working fine, but it is slow as a dog. I’m done with big computers. Last but not least I am either going to sell or trade in my MacBook Pro 2017 15 inch with a 256 GB solid-state drive. The thing that kills me about this… As I wound up talking to a great senior advisor at Apple about the battery giving me some problems and I caught him on a good day and even though my AppleCare is long expired on it, he had a box sent to me and I was able to send it to Apple and they replaced the battery for free! To make this even better they sent me a text message and told me they found something they didn’t like something on the logic board and they also replaced the whole logic board so basically it’s a new computer, right? This was just done by Apple in January of this year 2022. Best Buy is offering me $425 for a trade-in on a new one or just a gift card for $425. I would think I could definitely sell that on craigslist for at least $600? I know you’re busy and I always ask you these long questions. I was a supporter of your channel monthly and plan to do that again after I sell my home and get situated with retirement. Any feedback would be helpful from you. Also, any comments from other viewers of this, would be welcomed. Thanks so much. I am a nutcase when it comes to security. Here’s a final question I just thought of… What about thumb drives going back to 2005? I must have 20 of those!:-) I know you’re loving Ness. Thank you.👍🏻👍🏻

HI, Laptop with soldered in C drive- Windows , How do i erase the C drive if i need the operating system on it to do it and its all being erased? I have USB stick with ubuntu on it if that helps. If i do a fresh install, it only has option for delete not ERASE when you what to start fresh. Thanks

How can u wipe the hard drive with out being able to log in on the computer?

Does Apple have this kind of info on their website or YT channel? They should have an entire webpage and YT videos dedicated to this to help protect people. The info should be simple and easy to access with helpful photos and videos of the process. This should be easy for us.

As mentioned at 6:20 Turning on File Vault after the fact is an odd suggestion. You have no guarantee that the new encrypted files would overwrite the original unencrypted files. You might think and feel more secure doing this but if you were in a situation where you really needed to make sure your data is fully gone this is not a good suggestion.

One important piece of information is missing in the video: Even on the M1 Macs it's necessary to enable FileVault because the "standard" encryption is easily bypassed. Search for "Built-In Mac SSD Encryption Is Easily Bypassed by an Attacker With Physical Access if Filevault Isn't Enabled" to get more info.

1. Erase from recovery disk utility 2. Create a new account again and enable file vault 3. Open terminal 4. Run 'dd if=/dev/random of=rnd bs=1M' This would write random data to the encrypted disk. You could do this multiple times. Totally unnecessary though. Great video!

6:56, so why didn’t Apple just remove FileVault on these Macs? Seems pointless if your data is already encrypted.

I just yank out my old drives; destroy them... and sleep tight.

You should always secure wipe your device before you give it away … no excuses

I’ll just burn mine. With fire. Solved.

Much too wordy to follow the mass of information. I don't know how to access apple's site and if I did how to find on there the facility you mention to do the drive erase and factory reset. All much too complicated. A reset button with a pin would be a much more useful option. My next option is to put a 9lb club hammer through the Macbook 13 and take it to the tip !

❌❌❌That swcure erase is gone in m2 mac mini❌❌❌❌

1st

Macs are absolute trash. Nothing wrong with them a flamethrower couldn't fix. Thanks for the video.