

- #Prepare mac mini for sale remove password how to
- #Prepare mac mini for sale remove password mac os
- #Prepare mac mini for sale remove password install
If you’re using a tablet or smartphone, you probably don’t have to worry as much about backing up its data. Consult our look at what files you should back up on your Windows PC if you need some help. But there’s still a good chance you have important local files sitting around. Files stored in services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive are stored online and can be easily accessed on your new PC. Thanks to cloud services, much of your important personal data may already come with you.

You should already be regularly backing up anyway, as this will protect you from hardware failures, malware, and other threats. Be sure to back up any important data on your old computer, smartphone, or tablet before wiping it.
#Prepare mac mini for sale remove password how to
“ How to Securely Erase Data from Your Mac and External Drives.This part’s obvious, but it’s important anyway.

Launch Disk Utility, select the drive, then select the Erase option.The drive is now empty, newly formatted and all the previous data is leftover, encrypted garbage. Final ThoughtsThis is a summary of what I’ve learned.

I’ve found that it’s always helpful to read more for a broder perspective and sanity check. Erasing an External SSDYou may want to securely erase an external Flash drive before selling or discarding. See Apple’s support document, “ Encrypt and protect a disk with a password.” The process is slightly different. Now erase the disk normally, using the standard erase option.īack up any data you want to preserve that’s on on the external Flash drive or SSD. The SSD now contains only unreadable, encrypted garbage.
#Prepare mac mini for sale remove password install
You may wish to install some version of macOS now to place the machine in the out-of-the-box mode. “ How to Securely Erase a Mac SSD.” In brief: (This what happens when you do a master reset on your iOS device.) Then the SSD is erased and formatted as usual.If someone were to examine the unused space on the newly erased drive with a digital forensic tool, all that would be seen is encrypted nonsense.For an Mac’s boot drive, Peter Cohen explains the process nicely. Back up any data you want to keep on your boot drive.
#Prepare mac mini for sale remove password mac os
The SSD Erasure IssueThe very best description of the difficulty conventional tools have in completely erasing an SSD comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF.) The article is: “ How to: Delete Your Data Securely on Mac OS X.” Skip to the very last major section labeled: “Secure Deletion on Solid-state Disks (SSDs), USB Flash Drives, and SD Cards.” It’s a long paragraph, but the language is simple as it describes how SSD “ wear leveling” undermines the best efforts of erasure tools to completely overwrite SSD data.As a result of how SSDs write data, the best practice today involves going one step beyond the simple process of using Apple’s Disk Utility “standard erase” for an SSD.If you haven’t already, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault and enable it. And that’s called a “cryptographic erase.”Selling your SSD Mac? Cryptographic erasure is a great option. Cryptographic EraseBasically, a cryptographic erase means encrypting the drive, then throwing a way the encryption key.
