Are you trying to remove things for privacy reasons? I wouldn't worry about it personally as they'll wipe the drive when they get it, but if you don't want anything falling into the wrong hands, delete everything from your user folder, then securely empty trash (go to Finder, Finder menu, Secure Empty Trash).
Do you have any other specific concerns? If you keep sensitive data elsewhere, delete it from there as well.
It's actually belongs to someone where I work and they requested it be wiped due to confidentiality reasons....I read on another thread here that I can wipe it with the OS X recovery disc........?
Yes, boot it from the Install CD, choose your language, go to Utilities in the menu bar, go down to Disk Utility and reformat. Your level of security concern depends on how many zero outs you want to wait on. When it is done, shut it down. Reboot holding the mouse clicker down, that will force the CD to eject, you will be greeted by a Mac that won't finish booting because there isn't even a System folder, much less any data!
It's actually belongs to someone where I work and they requested it be wiped due to confidentiality reasons....I read on another thread here that I can wipe it with the OS X recovery disc........?
Or just turn file vault on and send it to Apple...
That sounds fine and all, but I wouldn't want to take a chance that someone at Apple could crack it if they wanted to. I work for a IP law firm and this is a partner's laptop....
Being as I work in the refurb department - we have so many machines come through we dont even have time to look through people's computers. They are wiped first thing and the hard drive is tossed for scrap. Your data is in the safest hands and there are NO outside eyes that see one kb of information. We boot up on the NEtwork there, and wipe them without accessing the drive.
The other suggestions are good as well - But just so you know. :
Irrespective of whether or not people will look at it, the fact remains that they still can and although the majority of people won't care what's on it, it's not worth the risk with important data.
What I would do is get an external drive, clone the data to it using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
Boot up from the CD, open Disk Utility and do a 1 pass overwrite.
You can then install a clean OS X if you want.
When you get it back, just clone your stuff back on and everything is back to normal. No difficulty setting the machine up again.
Comments
Do you have any other specific concerns? If you keep sensitive data elsewhere, delete it from there as well.
It's actually belongs to someone where I work and they requested it be wiped due to confidentiality reasons....I read on another thread here that I can wipe it with the OS X recovery disc........?
Or just turn file vault on and send it to Apple...
EDIT - nevermind, I found it -
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/filevault/
That sounds fine and all, but I wouldn't want to take a chance that someone at Apple could crack it if they wanted to. I work for a IP law firm and this is a partner's laptop....
The other suggestions are good as well - But just so you know. :
What I would do is get an external drive, clone the data to it using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
Boot up from the CD, open Disk Utility and do a 1 pass overwrite.
You can then install a clean OS X if you want.
When you get it back, just clone your stuff back on and everything is back to normal. No difficulty setting the machine up again.