How to erase my Mac for selling

faceman

It's probably a stupid question but I'll ask anyway! I've a buyer for my iMac (I've just ordered a new one! ) so I wanted to erase my iMac as if it's brand new. I don't have any OSX disks.

For what it's worth it's a 2007 core 2 duo iMac with Yosemite installed.

Cheers!

Zcott

Create a bootable USB drive with your OS X variant of choice, and then boot into it, open Disk Utility and erase the drive with the Seven Pass Erase option. This writes over your data seven times to ensure no one can undelete it, but also takes seven times as long.

From there, install OS X.

faceman

Thanks for the reply. Forgive me stupidity, can you advise how I go about creating a bootable drive. (I have an external HDD but Im not sure if its bootable) Also how do I get an OSX variant? I dont have any OSX versions on disk.

Thanks!

evilivor

faceman wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. Forgive me stupidity, can you advise how I go about creating a bootable drive. (I have an external HDD but Im not sure if its bootable) Also how do I get an OSX variant? I dont have any OSX versions on disk.

Thanks!

What version OS are you running?

colm_c

With most of the newish Macs, you can just restart the machine and hold apple + R.

This will boot into recovery mode, from there you can use disk utilities to wipe the disk, then you can reinstall Mac OS.

Once it's installed, it will restart and ask you questions on configuration/country/language etc. then just switch it off and it's like it came out of the factory.

You will need an internet connection for this.

If it doesn't boot into recovery mode, then you'll need a bootable flash drive, here's a guide:
http://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT201372

faceman

evilivor wrote: »

What version OS are you running?

Yosemite

colm_c wrote: »

With most of the newish Macs, you can just restart the machine and hold apple + R.

This will boot into recovery mode, from there you can use disk utilities to wipe the disk, then you can reinstall Mac OS.

Once it's installed, it will restart and ask you questions on configuration/country/language etc. then just switch it off and it's like it came out of the factory.

You will need an internet connection for this.

If it doesn't boot into recovery mode, then you'll need a bootable flash drive, here's a guide:
http://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT201372

Do I need to have the install disks? Can I be connected to the internet via wifi or to I need a cable connection?

Cheers

colm_c

faceman wrote: »

Do I need to have the install disks? Can I be connected to the internet via wifi or to I need a cable connection?
Cheers

No disks required (hence the internet connection).

Wifi will work ok.