However, if you see an Erase Volume Group button, click that button instead

Click the Erase button in the toolbar, then enter the requested details: Name: Macintosh HDįormat: APFS or macOS Extended (Journaled), as recommended by Disk Utility.Select Macintosh HD in the sidebar of Disk Utility.From the utilities window, select Disk Utility and click Continue.If asked, select a user you know the password for, then enter their administrator password.Start up from macOS Recovery: Turn on your Mac, then immediately press and hold Command (⌘) and R until you see an Apple logo.

Completely erasing the device can take up to a few hours, so be sure to keep the device plugged in until the process is complete. This process varies depending on the computer's operating system, so we've listed the steps required for Windows 8, 10 and 11, and recent versions of MacOS. Once that's taken care of, the actual wiping can begin. Since this deletion is permanent, the first thing you'll want to do is transfer anything worth keeping over to an external drive. This wiping process not only deletes all files in the typical method, but also painstakingly overwrites every bit of data in the drive to make file recovery near-impossible. To prevent files from being recovered off your old computer, the drive must be wiped at the system level, and that requires some digging through settings. SSDs in particular are very susceptible to data recovery methods. For this reason, data recovery services can be used to rescue files that are accidentally deleted or corrupted, but they can also be used to obtain someone else's sensitive info. When the bin is emptied that digital real-estate on the hard drive or solid-state drive (SSD) will be marked as open, but the actual data will remain until another file comes along to overwrite it. The PC's operating system simply hides it from view, which is why files can easily be taken back out of the trash. This is because data on a hard drive isn't actually deleted by this command. For technical reasons, simply clicking ' delete' on a file or dragging it to the trash bin isn't going to cut it.

Hdd erase