deleting info before selling laptop

pennymakespounds

got a dell inspiron 1501 laptop ...that i'm selling .

I'm going to do a factory restore which i understand takes it back to how it came out of the box .

This will include deleting microsoft office and all the Word & Exel documents that i had on the machine.

Is there anything further i need to do ?..... does it completely remove those documents or are they still on the machine somewhere else ??

Anything else i need to do ?

thanks

hoppingjohn

there's a utility at killdisk.com that will delete everything, but you'll probably need a CD to restore the OS.

pennymakespounds

don't want to get into that if poss .

will deleting Office not take all traces of documents with it ?

A_Nice_Englishman

A factory restore from the supplied CD or DVD should do exactly what it says on the tin and return your computer to the same state it was when it left the factory.

Deleting Office will not delete the documents you created using it.

pennymakespounds

Deleting Office will not delete the documents you created using it.


But does deleting the docs/files in the normal way delete them completely .. leaving no traces ? .

Nothing dodgy !! .. just very confidential business letters/figures etc.

espresso

pennymakespounds wrote: »

Deleting Office will not delete the documents you created using it.


But does deleting the docs/files in the normal way delete them completely .. leaving no traces ? .

Nothing dodgy !! .. just very confidential business letters/figures etc.

No it does not. If they are "very confidential", you really need to format, wipe with dban etc. and then re-install windows before selling.

Genghis

I'd definitely use DBAN before selling it on.. http://dban.sourceforge.net/

Steve_xx

The problem is that if you reset it to factory standard there might still remain an option to do a "system restore". Thereby enabling someone to see all of the documents that were on the hard drive. Ideally you woud need to format the hard drive and install the operating system again I think.

Conor_3

Deleting any file DOES NOT remove it off the hard drive.

What happens is the first letter of the filename is replaced with a ? and the file marked as being able to be overwritten. Unless the part of the HDD where the file is stored is overwritten, the file remains. Even a format and repartition doesn't delete the file.

As already mentioned, you need to use a utility like killdisk.

REMEMBER old web browser cache files can contain information about online banking/passwords etc.

griff.

I have a dell desktop - every 6 months or so I do a factory restore when things get a bit cluttered up. I am quite happy with the result. Whereas I would agree that your hard disk still probably contains fragments of files that could be pieced together by an expert interested in doing that kind of thing, it kinda begs the question - what are the chances of your potential buyer being that kind of person? Pretty small I think.

Steve_xx

griff. wrote: »

I have a dell desktop - every 6 months or so I do a factory restore when things get a bit cluttered up. I am quite happy with the result. Whereas I would agree that your hard disk still probably contains fragments of files that could be pieced together by an expert interested in doing that kind of thing, it kinda begs the question - what are the chances of your potential buyer being that kind of person? Pretty small I think.

If the pc contains personal/banking details then it simply isn't worth the risk of that data being recovered by anyone other than its intended holder.