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100% Deleting on PC?

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shezza2
shezza2 Posts: 201 Forumite
Part of the Furniture 100 Posts Combo Breaker
in Techie Stuff
Hi all, I have the chance to purchase a new desk top pc and get a fairly decent part ex on my old one. The thing is how can I make sure that all my details have gone from the old one before handing it over? Is there a 100% fool proof way of deleting all my details from it?

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  • victor2
    victor2 Posts: 8,109 Ambassador
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Wipe the disk with DBAN, then do a factory restore on it.

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  • Semple
    Semple Posts: 392 Forumite
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    The only 100% fool proof way would be a physical destruction of the disk - which a lot of government agencies around the world do when it comes to disposing of hard drives.

    Doesn't sound like that's an option here, so second best will require encrypting the drive, which should in theory prevent any data from being read from the drive. Same method applies if you sell a smart phone on.

    Lots of interesting technical babble here if you want a read:
    here
  • rmg1
    rmg1 Posts: 3,159 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Assuming you want to be able to use the drive afterwards (even just to put a basic OS on it), you can't destroy or encrypt it.

    Also assuming you have an install disc, reinstall the OS (and select the option to wipe the drive first) then install CCLeaner.

    Within CCleaner, there is an option to wipe free space. Choose that and select the number of passes (3 should do it, 5 for the seriously paranoid).

    If you don't have discs and it's a restore partition, use that and then do the CCleaner bit.
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  • fermi
    fermi Posts: 40,542 Forumite
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    shezza2 wrote: »
    Hi all, I have the chance to purchase a new desk top pc and get a fairly decent part ex on my old one. The thing is how can I make sure that all my details have gone from the old one before handing it over? Is there a 100% fool proof way of deleting all my details from it?

    Where I worked for a bit, they used to use the on-site forge to melt the hard drive down to an ingot. IT department used them to build a wall of PC hard drive death in their office.
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  • mr_fishbulb
    mr_fishbulb Posts: 5,224 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    DBAN and then reinstall OS is what I'd do.
  • vuvuzela
    vuvuzela Posts: 3,648 Forumite
    shezza2 wrote: »
    Hi all, I have the chance to purchase a new desk top pc and get a fairly decent part ex on my old one. The thing is how can I make sure that all my details have gone from the old one before handing it over? Is there a 100% fool proof way of deleting all my details from it?

    £33 for a new 500GB Sata drive, then there's no chance at all that your data will go elsewhere, you can keep the other drive and use in a USB caddy or something similar.
    http://www.ebuyer.com/272944-seagate-500gb-3-5-sata-desktop-hard-drive-st500dm002
  • marleyboy
    marleyboy Posts: 16,698 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    As above, a fresh new HD is all it needs, the bonus being that you still have your data on your old drive.
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  • jshm2
    jshm2 Posts: 475 Forumite
    Ninth Anniversary 100 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Yes. Provided you have a restore partition on your HDD you can do a secure wipe of the remaining HDD and then do a restore of the system to ensure they get a clean booting system,
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