[X4U] What do I clean out?

[Neil Laubenthal]

Fourth vote for this . . .

Export bookmarks
Export those address book stuff you want to move over to the new  
account.
Export any other files/documents/whatever that need to move.

Log in as admin and create new account as well as delete the old  
account. Trash the old user's home and Secure Empty the trash. Set  
new user to autologin if desired.

Login as the new user, import the exported stuff.

If it was me . . . and I wasn't reformatting the entire drive . . . I  
would at least wipe all the free space. One easy way to do this is to  
find something large (a file, the Adobe Photoshop Folder, whatever.  
Create a new folder at the desktop of the admin user and copy the  
large file/folder into this folder. Duplicate whatever you copied as  
many times as possible to fill up the empty space on the  
drive . . .being careful not to actually fill it all up since the OS  
really doesn't like this (although it probably won't hurt for a  
couple of minutes while you follow this process). Once you've filled  
up the space; trash the newly duplicated files and Secure Empty the  
trash.

There's probably some free utility at versiontracker or macupdate  
that will zero free space as well . . . here's one that will securely  
empty the trash even better than Apple's

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14776/permanent-eraser

Here's one that will wipe free space

http://www.cleansofts.com/get/522/38509/ShredIt_X.html

It's shareware though . . . but might be buying and keeping the  
license yourself . . . or the demo looks like it will do it although  
I didn't actually try it.



On Apr 28, 2007, at 08:47, Rick Smykla wrote:

> Mark,
>
> Deauthorize the machine for your iTunes account, if you've ever  
> used the machine for this.
>
> I'll third the vote to create a new user account and move the bits  
> you need to save before deleting your original one.
>
> Rick
>
>
> On Apr 27, 2007, at 8:06 PM, Mark Des Cotes wrote:
>
>> I've given my notice and will be leaving my current job at the end  
>> of next week. I'd like to make sure I clean out the computer so  
>> that there's no "personal" information left behind. Here's what  
>> I've done so far.
>>
>>
>> It would be easy to just create a new User and delete mine, but I  
>> need to leave some info there (address book, bookmarks)
>>
>> Mark Des Cotes
>> Graphic Designer
>>