Question Selling my laptop online, is a factory reset enough via windows 10?

FearLegendary

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Mar 20, 2012
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Long story short, going to be selling my laptop online however I'm paranoid about people somehow recovering my data. Mostly my email is of conern. Would just doing a factory reset suffice? I did the option to wipe all data.
 
Jul 14, 2021
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Generally-speaking, it's good enough. Unless the buyer purposely tries to recover your data. If I'm not mistaken, a factory reset is similar to a Quick Format, where data remains on the drive, although some of it may get overwritten as the system restores the installation files. If you really want to be safe, you might want to "sanitize" the drive. That's where software painstakingly overwrites and erases every sector on the drive.
 

FearLegendary

Distinguished
Mar 20, 2012
70
0
18,640
Generally-speaking, it's good enough. Unless the buyer purposely tries to recover your data. If I'm not mistaken, a factory reset is similar to a Quick Format, where data remains on the drive, although some of it may get overwritten as the system restores the installation files. If you really want to be safe, you might want to "sanitize" the drive. That's where software painstakingly overwrites and erases every sector on the drive.
But could they recover info for instance, a signed in email address to google chrome? I don't have any information thats important on the hard drive per say, I just don't want some random person accessing my email somehow after a fresh install lol
 
But could they recover info for instance, a signed in email address to google chrome? I don't have any information thats important on the hard drive per say, I just don't want some random person accessing my email somehow after a fresh install lol
None of that data will be useful when you perform a Reset. Even then, someone would have to be targeting you specifically to think about trying to use that data. And if someone is targeting you specifically, you're pretty much screwed.