Make sure you wipe your hard disk before selling on your PC!

bat191

If you decide to sell on your PC, make sure you wipe your hard disk properly!

There are people out there on auction sites and searching classified ad's that will be buying second hand PC's just to see what personal information they can get off of them.

Simply wiping the disk and re-installing Windows is not enough, there are plenty of free programs out there for recovering files from "wiped" hard disks.

Make sure you take the appropriate steps to wipe your disk, check out this guide for info on how:

Securely Wipe your Hard Disk With DBAN

SteveJH200

Okay, but make a note of the licence number either from the sticker on the case or by using a free tool such as SIW, Belarc Advisor etc so the new owner can install the operating system again without giving Microsoft more money!

JasX

A 'stating the obvious somewhat' thread but sensible advice and DBAN is a fairly effective tool for secure deletion/overwriting

(the less technically comfortable might consider leaving the OS in place and using (freeware) CCleaner's 'overwrite free space' function to achieve a 'similar' end depending on how paranoid you are.

Thanks button clicked for the OP

closed

reinstalling windows using recovery partition and wiping free space with ccleaner/eraser is enough

bat191

closed wrote: »

reinstalling windows using recovery partition and wiping free space with ccleaner/eraser is enough

Respectfully disagree, I've managed to recover photos and documents from a hard disk that had been wiped and had the OS re-installed. It's amazing what can be done with a bit of time and some free software.

closed

wipe free space does the same as dban

nokia1100

bat191 wrote: »

If you decide to sell on your PC, make sure you wipe your hard disk properly!

There are people out there on auction sites and searching classified ad's that will be buying second hand PC's just to see what personal information they can get off of them.

Where are these sad individuals? Personally I wouldn't have the time to bother trying to glean info off them. I've got two second hand PCs coming my way off eBay, the 40GB HDD from each will be given away in my old PC. If they contain the previous owner's deleted stuff, so be it.
New HDDs are something that I bother to buy (for reliability's sake), they are cheap enough these days. Then I monitor the SMART parameters using Speedfan.

googler

The most secure method is to take the HDD out of the computer you're selling, and keep it (the HDD).

Folks will still buy a PC without an HDD.

keystone

The only truly secure method is to liberally use one of these:



on it.

Cheers

shaun_from_Africa

googler wrote: »

The most secure method is to take the HDD out of the computer you're selling, and keep it (the HDD).

Folks will still buy a PC without an HDD.

But the selling price will be a fair bit lower than one with a HDD and OS installed, and the selling market will also be considerable smaller.
A lot of people wouldn't want to risk paying out for a computer without a HDD then spending money on this and a new operating system only to find that there are problems with their purchase.

Respectfully disagree, I've managed to recover photos and documents from a hard disk that had been wiped and had the OS re-installed.

Even if the entire free space has been overwritten? which is what the CCleaner free space wiping process does.
I would be very surprised to find that this was the case as even a simple 1 pass overwrite makes recovering files almost impossible for the average user, and CCleaner can be set to do up to 35 overpasses.

googler

shaun_from_Africa wrote: »

But the selling price will be a fair bit lower than one with a HDD and OS installed, and the selling market will also be considerable smaller.
A lot of people wouldn't want to risk paying out for a computer without a HDD then spending money on this and a new operating system only to find that there are problems with their purchase.

Yes, so the OP has to make a choice.

Spend lots of time downloading and using disc-clearing software for slight gain on selling price, or 5 mins to take drive out and sell PC for slightly less.

How much is your time worth?