Secure Delete over a Network - possible?

**sgould** · February 8th, 2011, 10:30 AM

Back at Christmas I bought a 27inch iMac and transferred all my stuff to it with Migration Assistant. All has gone well and I have not used the old MacMini since. It's still on my ethernet network and I can see it and access the files, if I need to, but it's sat there unused and normally switched off.

The old monitor has gone to a new home. Now I want to give the MacMini to my son, but it needs to have the data wiped beyond recovery. System files can stay.

I've dragged some of the files to Trash, but I get the pop-up saying "This will be deleted immediately. Do you want to continue?". Deleting is what I want, but I don't think it is "Secure Delete". Is there a way?

If I had the original monitor, I would set the system up and delete everything in the normal way using "Secure Delete Trash".

**Giaguara** · February 8th, 2011, 11:42 AM

Deleting is secure when the files that were deleted get immediately written over with 0s and 1s, making any recovery attempt for those files harder.
If those files you want deleted over the network would be e.g. where your Time Machine backups are, just install the OS again on the system you are giving away, and don't grant it access to the system.

As you are giving the Mac Mini to your son, I would recommend doing a clean Mac OS X install on that Mac before you create him a user. While you could just delete all your user specific files, and your old user, and create him a new admin user, it is still a better practice to wipe the system clean and give him a whole new start with the Mac.
All you need is the install discs (that came with the Mac, or 10.6 discs if you got a retail version after), and less than an hour of time - installing it is easy and I wouldn't recommend skipping it, provided you have the discs available.

**Satcomer** · February 8th, 2011, 11:42 AM

Is this old Mac Mini an Intel version one? If so you can get the cheap Snow Leopard disk (the Retail Version, not a version that came from another Mac) and do a fresh install on it. Just follow the steps in the blog How to Perform a Clean Install of Snow Leopard OS X 10.6.

**sgould** · February 8th, 2011, 11:49 AM

Thanks!

I think a clean install of the OS would be the way to go. I've got a retail OS 10.6 disk.

I've been thinking more. So just so I don't mess it up, is this right?

Start-up system with C held down.
Choose the MacMini as the destination and do a clean install on that volume.

I just want to be be 100% sure that the host iMac doesn't get anything changed.

I'll have a play.