Press the power button to turn it on, then immediately press and hold Command (⌘) + R. Once you're ready to wipe your Mac, do the following:Ģ. If you're giving your computer away, also make sure that you've signed out of iTunes, iCloud, and iMessage - there's a chance your Apple ID data will remain on the drive after you reset it, and you don't want anyone gaining access to your account. You can also backup onto iCloud, or manually move the files you want to save onto an external drive. You can do this through Time Machine, Apple's official backup application, which will copy all your files onto an external drive. After that, you’ll be able to rock the new freshly installed OS X.Check out the products mentioned in this article: MacBook Pro (From $1,299.99 at Best Buy) How to wipe a Mac computer with a factory resetīefore anything, if you don't want to lose the files you have saved on your computer, you should back them up. It can take a while, might want to play some Angry Birds for a while or grab a beer!Īfter the reinstall, you or the new owner will need to go through the setup process, transfer files, connect to WiFi…etc. You’re Mac will restart a few times automatically while everything is erased and reinstalled. Now you can kick back and wait while OS X reinstalls. If you only have one drive, it will be selected for you automatically.īefore OS X installs, you’ll need to log in to your Apple Account. Now agree to the terms of service for the software license.Īfter that select the hard drive you want to install OS X on. Click Continue at the bottom, and on the message that comes up, click the Continue button. Next you’ll get the OS X Mountain Lion screen. Reinstall Apple OS X Mountain LionĪfter that’s done, go back to OS X Utilities and this time highlight Reinstall OS X and click Continue. This does a similar job of securely erasing your drive as DBAN for Windows. If you want to be extra secure, select Security Options, then select 7-Pass Erase, which meets the US Department of Defense 5220-22 M standard. That will erase all data and reformat the hard disk. Select the local drive and click the Erase tab, Format should be set to Mac OS Extended (journaled), the click the Erase button. Start your Mac and hold down the Command + R key combination. Note: I started by selling my iPad 3, and if you’re selling yours, check out my article on how to erase your data and reset it.

How to factory reset a macbook pro os x