Advice on what to do with MBP before leaving it with Apple for a couple of weeks

[kat.hayes]

I need to bring my Macbook Pro to the Apple Store to have some work done on it and they are going to have it for a couple of weeks possible. I'm going to do a complete Time Machine backup before I bring it to them, though I'd prefer that they do not access my personal files. I thought about just wiping the drive before bringing it to them, though that will obviously be a lot of work when I get back. So now I'm thinking of maybe just logging out of my iCloud account, though I'm looking for any other ideas or suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[ajcgn]

You could create an encrypted disk image and put your sensitive data there.

 

[kat.hayes]

How is that done? Are there any drawbacks to doing this?

 

[MrAverigeUser]

You could create an encrypted disk image and put your sensitive data there.

If it is a model without soldered discs, just take out the disk before service.
If the disk is soldered you can create a (bootable) clone of the inbuild disk on an external disk (using carbon copy cloner) and - after checking that the clone is complete and well running - delete all private data. Since in this case the inbuild disk is a SSD, it is very difficult or nearly impossible to recover the data for a third person after deleting your data on it - but also for you! So - Make sure that your external clone is complete and well running... (Test it by booting from it)You could also be more radical and format the inbuild disk after you created your external clone.
Once you got your MBP back, you can easily copy your cloned disk back onto the inbuild SSD.

 

[ajcgn]

How is that done? Are there any drawbacks to doing this?

I didn't let the password get updated in the keychain, so one drawback would be if I forget the password I am SOL. I decided not to encrypt my whole hard drive, as from what I read it would slow it down. I think you have to decide what size you want it to be when you create it. I haven't gotten deep enough into the process to know how difficult it is to change the size of the image later.

Once you've opened up the encrypted disk image, you can move the data freely from the encrypted image to any other part of your drive later on. This link should help.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201599

 

[fisherking]

create a new admin account, log out of yours, and give them the mac (and password) for that new account...

 

[NoBoMac]

Re: creating a secondary admin account for Apple to use: great idea, but from a hiding personal information angle, not secure. If I recall correctly, anyone in the Administrators group has full root privileges with the sudo command, so, that means can pop open a Terminal and have full access to everything.

My vote is for create a clone, create an admin account for Apple, remove the primary account, the one with all the data on it. Then when you get the device back, put the clone back onto the primary drive. Or, reinstall OS and pull the user data from the clone and or TimeMachine.

 

[fisherking]

My vote is for create a clone, create an admin account for Apple, remove the primary account, the one with all the data on it. Then when you get the device back, put the clone back onto the primary drive. Or, reinstall OS and pull the user data from the clone and or TimeMachine.[/QUOTE]

or they can access the trashed files, and get your info. seriously...a new admin account will let them in, they can make repairs, and they'll get the mac back to you. have done that twice, worked perfectly.