deleting info before selling laptop

Conor_3

griff. wrote: »

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.

Pretty large. There was an article on BBC News several months ago about the trade in old hard drives from second hand systems and them being searched for online banking log in details. These HDDs were turning up in some right dodgy countries.

b33r

Even if the data is overwritten if whoever gets it was determined enough or passed it to experts it's still possible to retrieve information.

Example:



I personally wouldnt take the risk if I had any confidential data and didn't rotate my on line banking password regulary, esp with the price of hard drives now.

However the chance of that is very minimal but I would definatly recommend at least using killdata or something similiar as people have suggested.

inmypocketnottheirs

Penny, have sent you a PM.

zacspeed_2

If you're going to do a LLF before reinstalling Windows, it's worth backing up your drivers using one of the many free driver backup tools available online. simply save them into a folder on your hard drive, copy the folder to a CD or USB drive then when you've reloaded, reinstall from this.

Worth scanning the contents of the folder with your AV first, just incase.

pennymakespounds

. Tried doing Killdisk but was too complicated for me .
Did find . and ran .. programme called Fileshredder ..will that have killed off Word & Exel docs completely ?? .. and then did a factory reset.

heatherw_01

If I was selling I would format the HDD and re-install the OS

Markee

.....AND use a something like the freeware package 'Eraser' to overwrite the empty space to make sure noone can recover anything.

pennymakespounds

will "fileshredder" have totally deleted verything ?

Genghis

I've no idea what fileshredder is but it probably doesn't guarantee the removal of files that have been deleted in the past (and it probably doesn't guarantee the removal of the file in question if its been saved in random places on your HDD).

Some of the tools mentioned above will write zeros to all sectors of your HDD (several times over) to ensure there is no chance at all of someone recovering your data.