Read more about 10.11, El Capitan, mac, OS X, recovery partition, secure erase, terminal. Click on the Apple menu and select Shutdown.You’ll be returned to the OS X Utilities window.Click on the Terminal menu and select Quit Terminal.When the erase procedure eventually finishes, type exit in the Terminal window.A process window, like the one below will be displayed in Terminal. Sit back and wait many hours for the hard drive to be securely erased.Listed below are the various Levels permitted, from 0 to 4.
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Important Note: For a detailed explanation of this command read this article at OS X Daily about erasing free space from the command line. Type diskutil secureErase freespace 2 /Volumes/Macintosh HD (or replace Macintosh HD with the precise name of your Mac’s hard drive or replace 2 with another “Level”, see guide below) and then press the Return key.Only proceed if you’re comfortable using Terminal. One small typo could lead to the unintended loss of data or lose. Issuing commands requires precision and is unforgiving. Now erase the disk normally, using the standard erase option. Be careful when issuing commands from the Terminal. Select Unlock volume name from the File menu. Click on the Utilities menu and select Terminal.You’ll be returned to OS X Utilities window.Click on the Disk Utility menu and select Quit Disk Utility.It offers the option to run the drive internal secure erase command, security erase unit, based on the ATA specification by the T13 technical committee. You’ll be asked if you’re sure you want to erase it. HDDerase.exe is a DOS-based utility that securely erases sanitizes all data on ATA hard disk drives and SSD in Intel architecture computers (PCs).In the right pane of the Disk Utility window, click the Erase tab.In the left pane of the Disk Utility window, click on Macintosh HD (which is your laptop’s internal hard drive).Click on the Disk Utility option from the “OS X Utilities” window.Give your Mac a couple of minutes to startup, at which point you’ll see a window like the one this one.Once you see the Apple logo appear in the middle of the screen you can release the Command and R keys.This instructs the computer to startup from the Recovery Partition. 'Cleared' memory is not actually cleared sensitive.
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