Help before selling.

[Guest]

Hey, I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question however I have some concerns about a laptop I am selling. It has a mechanical drive in it for storage and I am concerned that despite performing a fresh install of Windows 10, my data may be recovered from it using special utilities. I have heard that it is always best to hold onto hard drives when selling computers since even if you 'securely' erase them, people can recover the data.

I do not recall having anything very valuable on the laptop however there may have been some family photos or photos of friends on it and I just don't feel comfortable knowing that my privacy is at risk despite not having much to hide.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: The reason for me not simply removing the hard drive is because I would then have to sell it for a lot cheaper or spend my own money on a replacement.

 

[Rodan1337]

Personally, I would never sell a laptop, I suggest storing it away in a storage room or a bin somewhere incase you ever need it again. But if you do still want to sell, always remove the memory/hard-drive and get it wiped. If you just install Windows 10, there may be a file marked Windows (whatever) from before the update, thats what happened on mine, and it had all my photos, programs, and info still on it. Hope this helps.

 

[Guest]

Personally, I would never sell a laptop, I suggest storing it away in a storage room or a bin somewhere incase you ever need it again. But if you do still want to sell, always remove the memory/hard-drive and get it wiped. If you just install Windows 10, there may be a file marked Windows (whatever) from before the update, thats what happened on mine, and it had all my photos, programs, and info still on it. Hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply! The problem I have is that it is a Gaming laptop that was a bad investment and I really need to make some of the money back.

 

[USAFRet]

Hey, I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question however I have some concerns about a laptop I am selling. It has a mechanical drive in it for storage and I am concerned that despite performing a fresh install of Windows 10, my data may be recovered from it using special utilities. I have heard that it is always best to hold onto hard drives when selling computers since even if you 'securely' erase them, people can recover the data.

I do not recall having anything very valuable on the laptop however there may have been some family photos or photos of friends on it and I just don't feel comfortable knowing that my privacy is at risk despite not having much to hide.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: The reason for me not simply removing the hard drive is because I would then have to sell it for a lot cheaper or spend my own money on a replacement.

Wipe the drive with DBAN and then do a reinstall of the OS
https://dban.org/

The new owner will not be able to retrieve anything from it.

 

[Rodan1337]

Hey, I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question however I have some concerns about a laptop I am selling. It has a mechanical drive in it for storage and I am concerned that despite performing a fresh install of Windows 10, my data may be recovered from it using special utilities. I have heard that it is always best to hold onto hard drives when selling computers since even if you 'securely' erase them, people can recover the data.

I do not recall having anything very valuable on the laptop however there may have been some family photos or photos of friends on it and I just don't feel comfortable knowing that my privacy is at risk despite not having much to hide.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: The reason for me not simply removing the hard drive is because I would then have to sell it for a lot cheaper or spend my own money on a replacement.

Wipe the drive with DBAN and then do a reinstall of the OS
https://dban.org/

The new owner will not be able to retrieve anything from it.

Exactly.

 

[Guest]

Hey, I am not sure if this is the right place to ask this question however I have some concerns about a laptop I am selling. It has a mechanical drive in it for storage and I am concerned that despite performing a fresh install of Windows 10, my data may be recovered from it using special utilities. I have heard that it is always best to hold onto hard drives when selling computers since even if you 'securely' erase them, people can recover the data.

I do not recall having anything very valuable on the laptop however there may have been some family photos or photos of friends on it and I just don't feel comfortable knowing that my privacy is at risk despite not having much to hide.

Thanks in advance!

EDIT: The reason for me not simply removing the hard drive is because I would then have to sell it for a lot cheaper or spend my own money on a replacement.

Wipe the drive with DBAN and then do a reinstall of the OS
https://dban.org/

The new owner will not be able to retrieve anything from it.

Thank you for your help!

 

[aquielisunari]

Personally, I would never sell a laptop, I suggest storing it away in a storage room or a bin somewhere incase you ever need it again. But if you do still want to sell, always remove the memory/hard-drive and get it wiped. If you just install Windows 10, there may be a file marked Windows (whatever) from before the update, thats what happened on mine, and it had all my photos, programs, and info still on it. Hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply! The problem I have is that it is a Gaming laptop that was a bad investment and I really need to make some of the money back.

Go ahead and install 10. A fresh install. Complete all your updates. Then, install https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download It will open to kist of what you want to delete. The other tab is for applications such as Nvidia's Control Center or AMD Crimson among many others. First off you can click on Options and then Settings. Once there change the deletion method to Very complex overwrite which is aka Gutman overwrite.

Think about it like this. I can download https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download and let it scan my PC. Let's assume I downloaded a lot of movies. I selected a few that I no longer want. I press delete and immediately notice I also deleted one of my best movies. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!! Or Irreplaceable pictures. Or anything else someone really needs. I can simply run Recuva, select the drive I know the movie is on and tell it to only search for videos. It shows the file and a green circle suggesting the file is still in pristine condition. I recover it to one of my other drives and all is well.

Now let's assume I have some sensitive information that I want deleted. Easy, I right click the file and click delete. But anybody can recover it. Let's assume the sensitive file is Hello. I perform an overwrite. Chances are good that [strike]hello[/strike] is still legible. But if I overwrite that file 35 times the file then becomes unrecoverable aside from professional retrieval experts/law enforcement with extremely expensive/complex methods not available to the general public.


Anyways, off on a tangent I went. After you change it to Gutmann click on Ccleaner(top-left BROOM icon). Check every single box for all of those options as well as all the options for applications. Yes, also check overwrite free space. Click on run cleaner. It will take a drive.



On a side note. If you(or anybody reading this) have an SSD never use that overwrite procedure unless you are going to be selling it.

 

[Guest]

Personally, I would never sell a laptop, I suggest storing it away in a storage room or a bin somewhere incase you ever need it again. But if you do still want to sell, always remove the memory/hard-drive and get it wiped. If you just install Windows 10, there may be a file marked Windows (whatever) from before the update, thats what happened on mine, and it had all my photos, programs, and info still on it. Hope this helps.

Thanks for your reply! The problem I have is that it is a Gaming laptop that was a bad investment and I really need to make some of the money back.

Go ahead and install 10. A fresh install. Complete all your updates. Then, install https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download It will open to kist of what you want to delete. The other tab is for applications such as Nvidia's Control Center or AMD Crimson among many others. First off you can click on Options and then Settings. Once there change the deletion method to Very complex overwrite which is aka Gutman overwrite.

Think about it like this. I can download https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download and let it scan my PC. Let's assume I downloaded a lot of movies. I selected a few that I no longer want. I press delete and immediately notice I also deleted one of my best movies. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!! Or Irreplaceable pictures. Or anything else someone really needs. I can simply run Recuva, select the drive I know the movie is on and tell it to only search for videos. It shows the file and a green circle suggesting the file is still in pristine condition. I recover it to one of my other drives and all is well.

Now let's assume I have some sensitive information that I want deleted. Easy, I right click the file and click delete. But anybody can recover it. Let's assume the sensitive file is Hello. I perform an overwrite. Chances are good that [strike]hello[/strike] is still legible. But if I overwrite that file 35 times the file then becomes unrecoverable aside from professional retrieval experts/law enforcement with extremely expensive/complex methods not available to the general public.


Anyways, off on a tangent I went. After you change it to Gutmann click on Ccleaner(top-left BROOM icon). Check every single box for all of those options as well as all the options for applications. Yes, also check overwrite free space. Click on run cleaner. It will take a drive.



On a side note. If you(or anybody reading this) have an SSD never use that overwrite procedure unless you are going to be selling it.

Thanks for your reply!