How to factory reset a 2010 MacBook Air?

I have the late 2010 MacBook Air and need a way to do a factory reset on it. Maybe factory reset is the wrong phrase, but I would like to delete all of the information from it so that nobody could access any of my information.

Any idea on how this can be done? (I do not have a Mac OS X disk.)

Solution 1:

The Macbook Air should have shipped with a small USB drive that contains the installation software.

It won't be easy to do what you want to without booting from something other than the System disk in your Mac.

Assuming you have the USB drive that shipped with the Macbook Air (you should have unless there is a good reason why you don't have it), you should insert it and boot from it, by holding the option (alt) key just after you hear the chime when turning the machine on.

After holding the option key for a short while, you will be presented with a choice of boot volumes, one of which should be the OS X installer.

Run the installer and follow the instructions to reinstall the OS, at which point you should be given the option to wipe the current install and start fresh.

If you want extra security, you can use the Disk Utility while in the installation mode, by choosing it from the Utilities menu that is at the top of the screen.

From there you can erase the disk, choosing from a range of security options when doing so.

If you don't have the USB drive you will have to obtain one somehow - which may mean taking the Mac to an Apple Store.

Failing that, maybe you'll be able to acquire a install disk image from some place on the web and install it to an external drive that you can boot from. Not going to help with that though.

Solution 2:

It's easy to re-install the operating system. It's a free service at most Apple retail stores and you can always re-order the install media from apple if you lost it.

As to preventing someone from reading the data - that's normally done after the clean erase install. You can use disk utility and a test account to write random data over the free space once or twice to make it nearly impossible to get anything back. I haven't seen a credible source show that modern drives are any more secure after one or two passes (as compared to older technology where NSA/FBI expense units could still retrieve data after an erase attempt.)

SSD are a bit more tricky with wear leveling and extra space hidden from the OS - but unless you are worried someone will take the flash storage apart to retrieve this "hidden data" - the same two passes is shown to erase 85% of the blocks or more which for most people is enough.