how to remove all data before selling laptop? experts please help

[acerts4]

hey everyone, i have a question today i have just thought about. i want to sell my laptop and always figured i would just simply restore to factory settings and be ok to sell. me being a paranoid person, is that really enough? would someone be able to use some professional data recovery software and be able to recover my personal data and pictures off the hard drive? if so, would it be better to create my factory restore discs and then use something lie DBAN to wipe the hard drive clean. then restore to factory settings using my created discs? all input is appreciated, hopefully someone with experience can help me as i want to get the best information possible!

if a complete wipe is recommended , any specific free programs you use or recommend?

thank you so much

 

[Karenas]

Hi, you may find the info you're looking here http://www.pcworld.com/article/209418/how_do_i_permanently_delete_files_from_my_hard_disk.html

 

[neon neophyte]

aye, the information is there until it is written over. much of it would be recoverable after a "factory reset."

there are programs that write over every sector on the disc as to wipe it. i cant think of any offhand or even know which ones are good.

if you want to get really paranoid, ive heard in extreme circumstances it is even possible to read a hdd after it has been written over. dont ask me how that works.

 

[Guest]

Recover personal data. Run DBAN with a PRNG Stream. Reinstall OS.

 

[acerts4]

Thank you for the replys! I have read that one pass of dban is enough to be safe from any info being recovered. If i run prng stream once, should i choose mersenne twister or issac? Which is better to use?
Thanks!

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the replys! I have read that one pass of dban is enough to be safe from any info being recovered. If i run prng stream once, should i choose mersenne twister or issac? Which is better to use?
Thanks!

Mersenne twister

 

[acerts4]

one pass enough?