Use option 4 instead of 1 or run the command twice for a slightly more secure and time consuming wipe, but keep in mind that wiping is not particularly healthy for the drive, especially if it is an older model.Įnabling FileVault as soon as these drives are put in production will mitigate future issues with drive wiping, especially if the password is secure. Replace disk1s1 with the correct slice corresponding to your volume. Start Terminal and run diskutil list to find the volume, then:ĭiskutil secureErase freespace 1 /dev/disk1s1.First, format the drive as HFS+ with a MBR bootblock (takes less space than GUID, resulting in more wiped data) with Disk Utility.Start the macOS installer from an external drive (wiping will be much faster than using target disk mode). It won’t securely erase the entire drive, but it’s as close as you can get and be sure that the SSD controller has overwritten a large percentage of the drive. A good compromise would be wiping free space with random values.

Most SSDs from Apple are manufactured by Samsung, Toshiba or SanDisk. A quick reformat might start garbage collection on unused areas, but without knowing exactly how your drive’s controller works, it’s difficult to be sure.

This means you cannot know for sure whether all areas of the drive have been wiped with a traditional wipe. Older machines can be grouped into three categories: Macs with Apple solid-state drivesīecause of wear levelingsome areas of the drive are not directly accessible. Deleting the keys effectively renders the material on a drive inaccessible, even if FileVault has not been enabled or it has and the password isn’t sufficiently secure. Simply reformatting an iPhone (Erase All Content and Settings) or erasing a drive from Recovery should suffice. iPhones and T2 machines are encrypted by default. On iPhones and recent Macs with the T2 Secure Enclave, Apple has made sure that cryptographic keys are properly deleted, using effaceable storage.

Mac disk utility secure erase