How do I wipe my personal information from my laptop before I sell it on Ebay?

stinch

neilwoods wrote:

To wipe the data, the OP will need to take it out, have an adapter to fit to pc then use the program. Simpler to just remove it, and sell for spares minus the hard drive.

Most laptops have some other drive they can boot from. Be it a CD, floppy or USB. Just download the relevant dban, copy it to the bootable media and boot the laptop from it. No need to remove the drive and connect it to a pc.

ankles4242

Personally I would remove the hard drive as data is recoverable after formatting even after formatting quite a few times.
I have used software which I won't mention to recover text files,pictures and music from when I've formatted.
Text and pictures are the easiest types to recover.

ormus

there are lots of programs that will wipe the drive proper, as been stated.
some of them do it to FBI standards.

the 100% way is to remove the hdd and smash it or keep it for yourself.
similar to the virus/trojan problem. the only sure way is not to connect to the net!