To ensure clean hd before selling unit: Best practice?

  • Thread starter Thread starter riprap1951
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riprap1951

Hello, All
I'm planning to sell a laptop that's been in use for a couple of
years, & want to ensure that after the new owner gets the unit there's
zero chance of her/him coming across old/sensitive data.
Is a total re-format of the hard drive and a re-install of XP
sufficient? Or is it necessary to first use a drive-wipe utility like
DBan or Eraser?
Thanks in advance [:-)
riprap.
 
riprap1951 said:
I'm planning to sell a laptop that's been in use for a couple of
years, & want to ensure that after the new owner gets the unit
there's zero chance of her/him coming across old/sensitive data.
Is a total re-format of the hard drive and a re-install of XP
sufficient? Or is it necessary to first use a drive-wipe utility
like DBan or Eraser?
Click to expand...

Necessary? No - for most a repartition and reinstallation of the OS is
sufficient.
Some will destroy the hard drive - literally - and sell the rest.
Depends on your situation.

Want to feel better - seeing that you asked this question, you are paranoid
about it - then do a 14 level zero-write and then partition and format and
reinstall the OS and sell it. If they get the data off of it then, they
either have too much time, too much money, both OR you are an international
spy and should have opted for the "sledgehammer, melt drive to slag, make
into watch parts" option.
 
Hello, All
I'm planning to sell a laptop that's been in use for a couple of
years, & want to ensure that after the new owner gets the unit there's
zero chance of her/him coming across old/sensitive data.
Is a total re-format of the hard drive and a re-install of XP
sufficient? Or is it necessary to first use a drive-wipe utility like
DBan or Eraser?
Thanks in advance [:-)
riprap.
Click to expand...


To protect your personal information and data from any future users
of average skills, you should, at the very least, format the hard drive.
If you wish to do a more thorough job of protecting your friend's
personal data, WipeDrive
(http://www.whitecanyon.com/wipedrive-erase-hard-drive.php) meets U.S.
DoD standards for securely cleaning surplus unclassified hard drives,
and could be used before formatting and reinstalling the OS and
applications.



--

Bruce Chambers

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chains and slavery? .... I know not what course others may take, but as
for me, give me liberty, or give me death! -Patrick Henry
 
Hello, Bruce & Shenan!
Thanks much for the input. You've given me material f/ thought--plus
good links [;-)
No, I'm not an international spy. But recently I was very surprised
to find, after doing a re-install of WinXP Pro on a C: partition, that
there were plenty of 'remnants' of old user profiles floating around
that the install obviously did not deal with...so many remnants, that
the new user-profiles I created [with same names as old ones] were
immediately corrupted, to the pt. where I had to do yet another
install. [The second time I worked harder to get a clean partition to
work with, and things went better.]
Thanks again for your time.
riprap.
 
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