#How do you make your hard drive readable for xbox and mac install#

You can then install OS X on that partition, either from the recovery system or via an external drive.Ī few other recovery and FileVault issues Without the key, which is uncrackable in any realistic period of time by any current technology, the erased data is as good as gone as if it had been written over millions of times.

#How do you make your hard drive readable for xbox and mac free#

The advantage is that your computer remains available (though often slow) while this operation is underway.Īlong with both Secure Erase and the Erase Free Space options, which can take a very, very long time even for a single pass, you’ve got two other options, one of which you don’t need to enable.Įrasing a FileVault-encrypted volume discards the key that’s associated with it, turning a disk into a nearly perfect cacophony of irrecoverable randomness. Now use the Erase Free Space option, which also offers 1, 3, and 7 passes of erase, and only empties out unused parts of the disk. After you boot, launch Disk Utility, select the startup volume, and click the Erase tab. First, erase a drive without the overwriting part, and reinstall OS X. There’s a slightly different way to accomplish the same goal. You’ll save a little time if you do an erase without overwriting, then reinstall OS X, then Erase Free Space with an overwriting option. Select Disk Utility from the startup menu, and you can erase your startup drive securely.

#How do you make your hard drive readable for xbox and mac mac#

Restart a Mac and hold down Command-R after the startup chime sounds, and the computer boots into the recovery mode. But this has become easier since OS X Recovery was added in Lion. Then you’d run Disk Utility to erase your startup drive. Securely erase your hard drive with Disk Utility.īefore Lion, you had to boot from a CD or DVD system disk or a third-party utility, like Disk Warrior, or from an external drive with OS X installed. Once is considered enough for regular purposes, while three and seven correspond to different U.S. When you select a volume in Disk Utility and then the Erase tab, you can click Security Options to pick how many times the drive is overwritten: once, three times, or seven times. That’s been built into Apple’s Disk Utility for years. To get rid of old data in a thorough fashion, you need use a multi-pass approach, in which every bit of storage in the disk is overwritten with new data (often zeroes).

But it doesn’t make all the files on the disk unrecoverable-it just makes them harder to retrieve. Such an erase was, in practice, the best way to create a clean installation.

#How do you make your hard drive readable for xbox and mac software#

In the olden days, in the long ago, we ran utility software that often came from third parties, which would simply delete the catalog and related records.

Wiping or erasing a drive has a surprising number of definitions. Since I’m looking to resell my current Mac, how do I reinstall OS X, so as to wipe my hard drive and resell knowing the new buyer has a cleaned-up computer, and my files are nowhere to be found on it? Reader Jim Kay, who asked about migrating from one Mac to another a couple of weeks ago, had a second question as well that opens a delightful can of worms: When you sell or donate a Mac or give it to a family member, it’s best to make a clean break: wipe the puppy clean, reinstall the latest version of OS X, and hand off a system that you’re not worried has remnants of yourself on it.īut how can you be sure? Readers have written in with several related questions, so let’s talk this week about erasing a drive, how FileVault 2 encryption can play into it, and out-of-date Recovery Drive partitions.