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I am looking for the quickest and cheapest way to overwrite the ssd drive on a brand new, and now non-working 15" MBP. It is the 512gb drive and the model is A1398. I just purchased it a couple days ago, and within a few hours of starting it and restoring from my back up, the whole thing has completely shut down. Brought it to Apple, tried every reset imaginable, etc.. Still under warranty, but have to write over the data before handing back to them and getting a replacement. They have assured me that the sweatshops they will ship it back to are very secure and my data will not be recovered and used of course, but a little bit of prevention goes a long way. I do not need to recover any btw, it is all backed up on the external drive. So any help offered would be great. Thanks!
If the new Mac still powers on: 1/ Press and hold Command + “R” and start your Mac. Once it boots, choose Disk Utility, and erase your disk/partition. 2/ It boots and you have another older Mac or can borrow one, connect the old to the new using a Thunderbolt cable, then start the new Retina Mac while pressing and holding down the “T” key. Once it starts and shows a lighting bolt on the screen, you can access the drive from your other older Mac, start disk utility, and erase the drive of the Retina. 3/ It boots and you have a bootable hard drive that contains your old system or any recent OS X system, but don’t have a Mac to use: buy an enclosure, insert your hard drive in it, connect it to your Retina, press and hold ALT. Once it boots, you will have the option to choose your enclosure drive as the start-up disk. Click on it, boot from it, start Disk Utility and erase your Retina’s drive. If, however, your Mac is dead and won’t start, you can try to find the same model to borrow, transfer your SSD, and use method 1 here above to erase your disk, then put it back in your Mac and take it to Apple. Though if it looks like you tempered with it, this will likely void your warranty. Another option would be to find an enclosure such as here, transfer your Mac’s SSD to it, use another Mac to wipe it / format it, then put it back. Also some airport scanners are pretty good at wiping your disk when you least expect it. Travel somewhere :)
