I plan on selling my laptop of 5 years onto ebay in a few weeks.
I am going to factory-reset it before I ship it, but should I really be concerned about someone digging deep within my hard drive and finding my information? Is that even possible?
I would imagine that the average ebay customer wouldn't think to do something like that, but if I can do any precautionary methods to ensure that it wouldn't happen I will.
I would zero-out the hard drive.
>>52104182
Would that also wipe out the operating system (win7)?
Also, my hard drive is in a unique position where it was partitioned by the factory. Would this method take care of both partitions?
>>52104287
you could always just remove the hard drive
>>52104305
Yeah, but I would have to find a hard drive that matches my laptop's size. Then I would need a copy of win7.
>>52104400
Or just sell the laptop with no hard drive for a lower price
>>52104453
That may actually work. I wonder if it would sell.
What could I do with the actual hard drive? Throw it in into a metal recycling center?
>download dban iso
>burn dban iso to a DVD or a USB (burn ISO to USB with rufus, gratis windows program)
>insert dvd/usb
>turn on computer
>select temporary boot device
>USB/DVD
>engage dban
there u go
>>52104484
Normies might not want to order a hard drive and OS themselves, so that could rule them out.
Take the hard drive apart and ground the platters into dust if you're serious about destroying your old info.
>>52104082
ccleaner has an option to wipe free space. windows 10 has an option to wipe the drive and reset windows 10, might be worth the upgrade.
>>52104506
I don't want to have to fuck with bios...
>>52104569
You don't have to do shit with the bios.
>>52104589
Still though, that seems like way too much. Can't I just do something like delete all my stuff and run CCleaner or something?
>>52104506
Would this wipe out the OS?
>>52104561
>Take the hard drive apart and ground the platters into dust if you're serious about destroying your old info.
Im not totally paranoid about selling it on ebay, I could just change all of my passwords to all of the sites I use (gmail, paypal etc) after resetting it.
>>52104562
>ccleaner has an option to wipe free space
and it's effective? So what I could do is factory reset it then use ccleaner to further wipe it out?
>>52104602
>Would this wipe out the OS?
Yep, DBAN will completely nuke the hard drive. It will be perfectly able to function when the user wants to put a new OS on it, but until then it'll just be empty space.
If you have a CoA sticker on the laptop you can legally grab OEM install media from the pirate bay that matches the manufacturer of your laptop then install it.
The only reliable way would be to nuke the hard drive.
>>52104594
fucking retard, you ask for a easy solution and then bitch around when an easy solution is provided!
>>52104287
>Would that also wipe out the operating system
>>52104400
>I would need a copy of win7
>>52104569
>I don't want to have to fuck with bios
>>52104594
>Can't I just do something like delete all my stuff and run CCleaner
