Help Desk

Can’t erase your Mac’s startup disk? Try Internet Recovery as a last resort

When you’re trying to wipe an old Mac to set it up fresh or to give it away or sell it, you typically want to erase the drive. Sometimes, you’re thwarted.

The easiest sequence is the following:

1. Select › >Restart if your Mac is running.

2. Just as the computer starts, hold down Command-R, which loads macOS Recovery.

3. Wait until the startup progress bar appears and release the keys. (If you see a globe, skip down to the end of the article.)

4. When Recovery starts up, select Disk Utility and click Continue.

5. Make sure you’re selecting your macOS startup partition and not the entire drive, which contains the macOS Recovery partition you’re currently using. From the View menu, select Show All Devices.

6. Select just the partition or container with macOS and click the Erase button.

7. Quit Disk Utility and use Reinstall macOS from the main recovery window.

It’s possible