Wiping laptop clean

bungalow_bill

Hi all,
I'm selling a laptop on e-bay, and although I've deleted everything that's obvious, how can I make sure that its safe to pass on?

Thanks

Hammyman

Wipe the hard drive with one of many of the utilities available to securely wipe the drive and then re-install the software or sell it with a bare drive.

jayme1

do you have the recovery disc?

if you do then use DBAN or active@killdisk that will fully erase the hard disc, then just use the restore discs to return the laptop to factory defaults.

hubert_cumberdale

you will need to use something strong that write random 1 and 0 over all the data in a few passes.

a simple format is fully recoverable even back quite a few formats. I lost some files on my disc and was able to recover data that was deleted around 5 years ago in full and its had had more than 5 formats

oldtoolie

The latest version of the excellent free utility CCleaner will do just what you want done. https://www.piriform.com

bungalow_bill

oldtoolie wrote: »

The latest version of the excellent free utility CCleaner will do just what you want done. www.piriform.com

Its windows me, so the Ccleaner won't run. Any other links to work on older OS?

closed

with me, you won't get much (if anything) for it.

http://eraser.heidi.ie/

you need to reinstall the os first, then wipe free space.

spud17

bungalow_bill wrote: »

Its windows me, so the Ccleaner won't run. Any other links to work on older OS?

This is the last one which claims to be 'Windows (All versions)' v.2.36.1233

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/tech/8417/

You can check for yourself, the next newer link (CCleaner v. 3.xxxx) starts at Win2000.

googler

Take the hard drive out, keep it and sell the laptop without it.

That's the most secure method.