My mother in law recently got a hand me down macbook (from one of her sons who just got a new one). She asked me if I know the best way to wipe it clean of all personal info and unwanted programs, while keeping the programs that she wants. I don't, other than deleting everything manually. Is there a program that will do such a thing, preferably free?
The factory startup/boot disc will have an option to reformat and reinstall all the factory software. If she didn't get those discs, they can be (legally?) obtained on the web. I've bought OS discs off eBay that worked fine in the past.
Once you do get everything deleted, they do have a neat disk erase feature where you can erase free space (i.e. make sure everything that's been deleted is really deleted.) It has three levels of security where it does a single pass, a 7-pass and a 35-pass of writing over unused space.
Might be worth asking the Apple Store guys if they'll do it for you, actually.
You'd need to define "unwanted programs" before you could ask software to clean up the drive for you. The software can't read your mind, so there's no way for it to tell if you want a particular file or not. :)
MacOS does compartmentalize things fairly well (certainly compared to Windows), so you can probably get 90% of the way there without too much effort. The application icons in the "Applications" folder are actually disguised directories themselves, which contain the various code & data files associated with that application. This means that (for well-behaved applications, which is most of them) you can delete an application and everything it directly installed by simply dragging that application into the trash.
Personal data is also mostly compartmented into the user's home directory. Creating a new account and then deleting the old user and old user's home directory should get most of it. Note that this would also get rid of any documents, music, etc that the old user had stored on the machine, so those should be copied to the new user's account if you want to preserve them.
Running a free space overwrite is also a good idea.
You can reinstall the base os, at that time use disk utility to reformat the hard drive.
Eric (acmt)
EricM wrote: You can reinstall the base os, at that time use disk utility to reformat the hard drive. Eric (acmt)
If I go that route, what would I do about keeping specific programs that she wants to keep? Can I just put everything that she wants to keep on an external hd before formatting?
16vCorey wrote:EricM wrote: You can reinstall the base os, at that time use disk utility to reformat the hard drive. Eric (acmt)If I go that route, what would I do about keeping specific programs that she wants to keep? Can I just put everything that she wants to keep on an external hd before formatting?
That should work. It is possible to partition the drive and put the programs you want to keep on the new partition, then move them back after the wipe/reinstall. Or, if the programs are readily available, just download them after the wipe.
But, like Keith said, if this is a recent model, an Apple store geek should be able to knock this out pretty quick. Make an appointment online before you go.
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