How would I completely sanitze my Powerbook?

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I will soon be leaving my company and I need to get any and all personal info off of my laptop(keychain access, .mac info, iDisk access, and anything else I am forgetting). What is the best way to do that without doing a complete reinstallation? Any suggestions. And is it possible to just completely backup the entire hard drive on to a firewire drive and then move everything to a new machine? I know osX doesn't like to show all of the files in the subsystems, without accessing them via the terminal. Would Dantz' Retrospect let me do this.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    baumanbauman Posts: 1,248member
    Check out Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact duplicate of your drive.



    As far as sanitizing it goes, with OS X, all your personal settings, passwords, etc, should be in your user folder. So, just remove your user, and add a new one, and you are all set.



    However, there may be some 'bad' apps that don't store user information correctly, and it could be in the system level 'Library' or in the Applications folder. The safest way would just be to reformat and reinstall, but it's your call. :/
  • Reply 2 of 7
    I have always wondered how to export the keychain when I have needed to (VERY VERY rarely) reformat. I end up never doing it, but it would be so nice. It would be wonderful if Panther had integrated backup capabilities, and could perhaps even watch folders for you and back up as soon as new stuff is entered. I have not found any backup programs I like, so I just copy stuff manually. (Like for mail, I just copy the data over or for Fire and stuff like that)
  • Reply 3 of 7
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Is it just me, or by "sanitize" are you asking to make the data unrecoverable forever. Just deleting the files does not remove them from your hard drive, you have to overwrite them. Maybe someone could post some programs that can wipe free disk space?
  • Reply 4 of 7
    kraig911kraig911 Posts: 912member
    you have to squeeze it, after you back it up, its in linux but I don't know about os X all it does is write the drive full with a nothing file, and then erase the file.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    neutrino23neutrino23 Posts: 1,561member
    One of the better ways would be to wipe the drive and zero it out - time consuming as it is.



    I would delete pretty much everything in my home directory. That should take care of nearly all preference files which are created without your knowledge. Then I'd clear out all the files I keep elsewhere. These are easier to find because I put them there myself.



    To be really safe I'd use something like SafeShred Xtreme. The Xtreme version has an option to shred the free space on a volume so there is no way to recover even fragments of deleted files. $25 to buy some peace of mind.
  • Reply 6 of 7
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by neutrino23

    One of the better ways would be to wipe the drive and zero it out - time consuming as it is.



    I would delete pretty much everything in my home directory. That should take care of nearly all preference files which are created without your knowledge. Then I'd clear out all the files I keep elsewhere. These are easier to find because I put them there myself.



    To be really safe I'd use something like SafeShred Xtreme. The Xtreme version has an option to shred the free space on a volume so there is no way to recover even fragments of deleted files. $25 to buy some peace of mind.




    I don;t know the app, but I have to agree with the premise.



    The only way, I repeat, the ONLY way to get rid of all information on a drive is to zero it (I've never done it personally). Unless the drive is filled up with zeros, files can still be recovered. There was article about this awhile ago...about these guys that bought drives off ebay just to prove they could get information. They got credit card numbers, financial info, etc...all from supposedly wiped drives.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    sikkdsikkd Posts: 47member
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