Is deleting the partion and reformatting enough for security

[kooch66]

I recently upgraded from a gaming laptop to a custom PC rig that I had some people build for me. I finally got around to selling the laptop on Ebay. I deleted the old partion, reformatted a new one, and re-installed Windows. Is this enough to completely remove all of my information that was there before? It seems as though everything is gone but I am no computer expert. I know that it stored a lot of personal information including my credit card number. I highly doubt that the buyer is a computer genious that is aiming to steal personal information by spending $600.00 on an Ebay computer from someone half way across the country as there are easier and cheaper ways, but you can never be too sure. Thanks in advance for any help.

I am sorry if this is on the wrong board, as I already posted it in hardware, but there are so many boards here it is confusing.

 

[fishmahn]

If the data you need erased is worth enough to someone to go through computer 'forensics' to retrieve the data (aka, Kroll/Ontrack), then no. Your data is still there, but there's no way to retrieve it without specialized tools and a lot of work.

Since its a personal machine, you should be just fine unless you got a nutcase on the other end.

If you want that extra bit of security, write zeros to the whole drive - most drives/mfgs have a utility for that so use Dell/Gateway/Seagate's whichever you have. For complete security, it should be overwritten with a random pattern I think 6 times, but even once is enough to raise the cost of retrieval into the stratosphere.

Mike.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

No. there are many programs out there that can recover all the data from a hard drive that has been wiped out in that maner. THe one I use is called GetDataBack and it can see data from many partitions ago. Very usefull.


Use ghosts BCwipe, or a highlevel disk wipe utility, or beter yet, Dont sell the hdd.