how to securely erase mac 10.6.8 hard drive

To 'erase' the platters, depending on whether or not the IT people wanted to see the wreckage, the guys would pick something (After they snooped- It was amazing how many were not erased):Ī) Wipe across them with microwave oven magnetron magnets from the appliance guys (a round concentrated field) I think now there are even stronger magnets available at the hardware store.ī) Cut & send the pieces to different compacting dumpsters (There were 6 on the dock)Ĭ) Torch them or use the arc welder (outdoors- Phew! stinky) We would take the magnets, bearings & tiny eyeglasses frame size screws out. Where I worked, the task of hard drive wrecking came to our department (skilled trades) instead of the IT people, I suppose it was because we had all kinds of scary looking wreck stuff tools. Some Non-Earth Friendly, But Fun Methods: I cut the platters into pieces and put part in one week's electronic recycling and part in the next week's.įor a SSD, other than secure erase, I don't have any idea that will make it safe and still keep it out of the landfill. (My eyeglasses will attest to that.)įor the most recent platter type hard drives of mine, which would not run secure erase was out. I recently used some on a motorized, cable driven lifter-upperer thing I made for someone. John also mentioned the bearings which are indeed smooth and very useful for make-goofy-stuff people like me. Press the Enter key and your external drive will be erased completely.I'm with Patrick on the Save The Magnets comment.Next, type: diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ (diskname diskidentifier).Now you’ll see a list of disks there, target yours through the disk identifier.Open it and enter this line: diskutil list.You can also try the Terminal app, though it’s a command-line tool that requires you to be a bit geeky.

If for any reason Disk Utility fails to wipe your drive. Wipe External Hard Drive on Mac via Terminal (Command Line)

It’s because SSDs don’t have to go through this process due to the way it manages files. Note: If your drive is an SSD, you won’t be able to click “Security Options” as this option will be grayed out.

Here you can specify how securely you want to wipe the drive, move to Most Secure if you are paranoid because this option overwrites more times to the disk space, though the process tends to be slower.

Next, click the Security Options button at the bottom.

Choose a file system to which you want to format your external drive.

Select the disk or volume in the list on the left panel.

Click on the Erase tab (next to “First Aid”).

On your Mac, go to Applications > Utilities >Disk Utility.Then follow the step by step tutorial below: Make sure the device can be detected by the machine. First off, connect your external hard drive to your Mac.

How to securely erase mac 10.6.8 hard drive