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I have two old MacBook laptops that are completely dead (they won’t turn on, and I have no desire to get them fixed – they are 16 and 11 years old, respectively.)
I know that I can’t trade them in but I would like to recycle them for environmental purposes. However I want to ensure that the data is wiped from both hard drives before I recycle them. Is it possible to do this when the computers themselves are dead?
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 11.2
If the laptops can power on, then it may be possible to put them into Target Disk Mode and attach them to another computer so you can erase the drives. This can work even if the laptop won't boot or the Display is broken, but the laptop must power on. Sorry, but I've seen too many posts on here where users write "wont turn on" when they really mean "it powers on, but won't boot". Just want to cover all the bases.
You can remove the hard drives from the laptops and use a USB to SATA Cable, drive dock, or external enclosure to connect the hard drive to another computer. If they are hard drives, then you will want to write a single pass of zeroes to the hard drive if the drives were not encrypted using Filevault. How you do this depends on the version of macOS, Windows, or Linux used on the host computer being used to erase the drives.
If the laptops can power on, then it may be possible to put them into Target Disk Mode and attach them to another computer so you can erase the drives. This can work even if the laptop won't boot or the Display is broken, but the laptop must power on. Sorry, but I've seen too many posts on here where users write "wont turn on" when they really mean "it powers on, but won't boot". Just want to cover all the bases.
You can remove the hard drives from the laptops and use a USB to SATA Cable, drive dock, or external enclosure to connect the hard drive to another computer. If they are hard drives, then you will want to write a single pass of zeroes to the hard drive if the drives were not encrypted using Filevault. How you do this depends on the version of macOS, Windows, or Linux used on the host computer being used to erase the drives.
How to wipe data from old MacBooks prior to recycling
