After that, you’ll be able to rock the new freshly installed OS X. Recently my macbook pro was crashing so I had to wipe the hard drive clean and install a fresh operating system. 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. This will erase all of the data on your Macbook Pro’s hard drive, including your forgotten password. Once you have selected your Macbook Pro’s hard drive, click the Erase button. Step 5: Erase your Macbook Pro’s hard drive. 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. In the Disk Utility window, select your Macbook Pro’s hard drive from the list of available drives. 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. To further optimize your system, check and fix your storage disk: Click Choose Applications, then Utilities, and Disk Utility. 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 clean up macbook pro hard drive