Jim Rossman: Passing down your old computer? Do this first

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Last week we talked about how to remove and destroy your old hard drive, so your data isn’t stolen.

I got a few emails from people who want to know how to safely erase their hard drives before they donate their computers to a friend or family member.

On a Windows 10 computer, go to Settings, then Update and Security and click the Get Started button under the Reset This PC section.

You’ll get a pop-up window asking you to choose a Reset option. You’ll want to choose “Remove Everything.” Then on the next screen, select “Local reinstall” and click the Change settings link at the Additional settings screen. Turn on the switch for “Clean Data,” which is the option that tells you the cleaning may take hours and will make it harder to recover files.

Click Next and review the settings, then click Reset. When the PC restarts you’ll see the Windows 10 setup screen. You can power it off and you’re done.

On a Mac, if you are running MacOS Monterey or later with an Apple Silicon processor (M1, M2, M3 or M4), you can use Erase All Content and Settings in the System Settings under General and scroll down to Transfer and Reset.

If your Mac is older, you’ll have to boot into MacOS Recovery, which is a different disk partition. You’ll need to restart your Mac and then immediately hold down the Command and R keys to boot into the recovery mode.

You’ll be asked to join a Wi-Fi network or connect a network cable. Then you select a volume to recover, usually called Macintosh HD and click Next.

When you see the list of Recovery utilities, you can choose to Erase the disk using Disk Utility and then you can Reinstall the Mac operating system, which will get the computer ready for the next user.

Oh, before I forget, if your computer is more than six or so years old, please consider just recycling it.