Resetting my Mac to "out of the box specs"?

[John Janssen]

New member here, and I'll bet this question has been asked once or twice before. My apologies if it has been asked previously. Anyway, I'm going to have to sell my IMac that I got last year for Christmas. How do I go about reformatting the hard drive and wipe out everything and put it back to "right out of the box" condition? Thanks in advance!

John J in SC

 

[honestone]

As long as you are using any Mac OS "above" Snow Leopard (OS 10.6.8), there should be a Recovery HD partition on your internal drive. This link explains how to get to it, and what it can do:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

After you boot to that partition, select Disk Utility, and have it COMPLETELY erase your internal drive. That is, select the maximum number of "passes" to get rid of anything.

Then, select the Install OS X option to install a "virgin" OS. After the installation finishes, don't do anything else.

 

[John Janssen]

I did download OSX El Capitan (v 10.11.4) shortly after getting my Mac.
Will that affect my putting things back to as they were when I opened the box?

 

[honestone]

I use a different method to erase and format the internal drive (SSD in my case) on either of my machines, as I do this from a SuperDuper! backup.

What exact iMac model do you have, and what exact model is your "newer" Mac?

 

[John Janssen]

Well, the reason I wish to reset everything back to "out of the box" condition is because I have to sell it. I don't have a "newer" Mac. I received it as a Christmas gift from my wife in December of 2014. I can list the specs on the box if it's important.

 

[honestone]

Do you have another Mac?

 

[John Janssen]

Not a desktop Mac. I do have an older MacBook that we bought for my son in 2007. He gave it to me two years later after he bought a new MacBook Pro in 2009. I don't use it much. Not even sure what version of the OS is on it.

 

[honestone]

Unfortunately, I've never used the software on the Recovery HD partition to try and accomplish what you need to do. Maybe someone else on here that has such experience can help you better.