Blancco Drive Eraser can be booted on Mac laptops and workstations, although in some cases the success of the procedure depends on the Mac model and involves some additional steps:

• The Mac EFI firmware is not able to boot from PXE natively (i.e. network booting is not possible).
• Blancco Drive Eraser can be booted on Macs using a bootable USB-stick (see the FAQ article about Booting on machines with UEFI for more information).
• On some Macs, booting from a USB-stick will not work, instead boot from a Blancco Drive Eraser ISO image burnt on a CD.
• If USB boot does not work properly and there is no optical drive available for CD booting, connect an external USB connectable optical drive to the system and try booting from it.
• Before booting Blancco Drive Eraser, remove any external peripheral that is not required in the erasure process, in particular remove any connected Thunderbolt interface/adapter (they do not react properly to the Blancco Drive Eraser freeze lock removal process and ultimately can provoke the failure of the erasure).

Some Apple machines (example models: MacBookPro11,1 with OWC Aura SSD, MacBookAir6,1 , MacBook9,1 , MacBook8,1 , MacBookAir7,1) contain drives (mainly ATA SSDs and NVMes) that do not implement any firmware-based erasure command required to perform a “purge-level” erasure (e.g. required if you use the erasure standards “NIST 800-88 Purge” or “Blancco SSD Erasure”). The problem lies in the drive firmware level where the required commands are missing:

• Selecting these drives for erasure and selecting a “purge-level” erasure standard (e.g. “NIST 800-88 Purge” or “Blancco SSD Erasure”) will display a “NOT SUPPORTED” icon under the drive (Erasure-step > Advanced-view). This means that the drive does not support the selected erasure standard (and not that the selected erasure standard does not support the drive).
• This problem cannot be fixed in Blancco Drive Eraser. Ideally, in order to have a chance to purge these drives, Apple should publish an updated drive firmware (for the drives in question) including the missing commands.
• For the time being, Blancco Drive Eraser can only overwrite these drives. Overwriting these drives with the erasure standards “Aperiodic Random Overwrite” or “HMG Lower Standard” and using a 100% verification will achieve a “clear-level” erasure.
• Some of these Apple machines have NVMe drives (example models: MacBookAir7,1 , MacBook8,1 , MacBook9,1). It is recommended to overwrite them with Blancco Drive Eraser 6.2.0 or higher.

Since 6.1.2, Blancco Drive Eraser has improved its support for newer Apple machines. Nevertheless, some models require the software to be booted with special booting parameters ¹:

• As a general recommendation, use preferably the booting option “FLR during startup”. If you use another booting option, make sure that the “splash” parameter is removed (if present).
  • Models successfully tested with this configuration: MacBookAir7,1 , MacBookAir7,2 , MacBookPro11,1 , MacBookPro11,4 , MacBookPro11,3
• On some models, you need to add the "nomodeset" parameter (if missing).
  • Models successfully tested with this configuration: MacBookPro13,3
• On some models, you need to add the "noapic" parameter.
  • Models successfully tested with this configuration: MacBook8,1 , iMac17,1 , MacPro6,1 , MacBookPro1,2
• On some models, if you have troubles with the keyboard, touchpad or TouchBar, try adding the "intremap=nosid" parameter.
  • Models successfully tested with this configuration: MacBookPro13,3 , MacBook9,1
• Keep in mind that some models need a combination of parameters.
  • As an example the iMac17,1 needs adding “noapic” and removing both “splash” and “nomodeset” (if present).

¹: Adding/removing the default booting parameters can be automated if the software image is configured with Blancco Drive Eraser Configuration Tool 2.2 or higher. This can also be carried out manually, as explained below:

1. Boot the machine, select the booting option (e.g. "FLR during startup"), press "e" to edit the option.
2. With arrow keys, move the cursor down to the line starting with: "linux /arch/boot/x86_64/vmlinuz img_dev=..."
3. Move the cursor after “$isofile” and add/remove the boot parameter(s) without quotes.
4. Press Ctrl + "X" or F10 to continue booting.