Deleting Hard Drive on Laptop for Sale

Knypolee

Hi,

I have read regarding data security of personal/financial information that may be on your hard drive when considering selling your laptop. I have looked at CCCleaner and other software products that offer the security of deleting your hard drive which get positive and negative feedback regarding security of this data when deleted/cleaned.

My question is: If I fill my hard drive (600gb) with movies and music files and then delete all the movies/music files from my hard drive. Will this overwrite all my previous financial files on my hard dive and if someone then tried to retrieve any information all they will find is movie and music files that were the last thing on there?

Hope my question makes sense and thank anyone who is able to reply/confirm the above.

Thanks.

JJ_Egan

Yes and no .

Videos etc will overwrite , but recovery tools may well get back some of the previous data .

Far easier to use a wipe tool like Dban or CCleaner advanced wipe .

TheRightOne

Just remove HDD and keep it. Replace it with a cheap 240 GB SSD if there is enough headroom in the sale price. Around £25.

DoaM

As per above ... unless you use some form of professional data wipe technique (and even then, no guarantee) the only way to guarantee the new owner cannot access your data is to keep the actual drive.

Mickey666

Remember the space shuttle that broke up and burned up on re-entry?  I’ve read that one of its hard drives was found and most of the data on it was able to be recovered!  Just an example of how robust the data recovery techniques can be.  Extreme example of course and you have to ask how much time, effort and money would someone spend trying to find old data on a domestic laptop.  

I’d be happy to use CCleaner wipe or an ‘Eraser’ app I’ve got with options to overwrite all free space (including spare space in existing files) with various bit patterns and multiple times.
for the really paranoid, replace the hard drive as mentioned above and physically destroy the hard drive by removing the  platters, cut them up - angle grinders will make a mess of them - and then burn them  Sounds a bit extreme?  I guess it all depends what has been stored on the drive in the past  

PRAISETHESUN

My personal favourite is smashing your old HDD to bits and replacing it with a new 2nd hand drive for sale. Otherwise a few passes with a zero-fill deletion program like Dban is probably good enough.

Knypolee

Thanks for all the help/advice and have decided it's easier and safer to replace the HD for piece of mind. Enjoyed the reference to the Space Shuttle which finalised my decision  . 

TheRightOne

Knypolee said:

Thanks for all the help/advice and have decided it's easier and safer to replace the HD for piece of mind. Enjoyed the reference to the Space Shuttle which finalised my decision  . 

Though no need to smash it. For a fiver you can make it in to USB 3.0 external storage, in a few seconds.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-3-0-2-5-Inch-Hard-Drive-Enclosure-SATA-HDD-SSD-Caddy-Case-For-LAPTOP-PC-DVR/373146100414

Replace old HDD with an SSD. It will making it faster than when new and increase it's saleability; https://www.mymemory.co.uk/memory/data-storage/ssd-drives.html?dir=asc&order=price

Place old HDD into the caddy above.

MinuteNoodles

Ignore all the above. if it is a convential mechanical drive use the free version of the following software from Blancco . It will overwrite the entire drive with ones and zeros and random and patterns making multiple passes and destroying the data on it. Blancco is used by governments to clean hard drives, it'll be more than sufficient.

https://dban.org/

Carrot007

MinuteNoodles said:

Ignore all the above. if it is a convential mechanical drive use the free version of the following software from Blancco . It will overwrite the entire drive with ones and zeros and random and patterns making multiple passes and destroying the data on it. Blancco is used by governments to clean hard drives, it'll be more than sufficient.

https://dban.org/

To be honest there is no evidence that anything has every been recovered from a drive overwritten once with zeros. The thing is most people just do a quick format. And the people with special software like to make it sound useful and worth money. Not to mention HD manufacturers like you to destroy old drives that might be reused. (I have destroyed many, but just for fun and too small to reuse or damaged).

Of course a full clear on a large modern drive takes bloody ages! So if it does not you know it is not done right.

I mean it could be recovered bit by bit with an electron microscope. Maybe someone could even automate it. It woiuld take decades though.

As for what to do. Either full format it with a fresh windows installation (which you should alwasy do before selling, people don't need your over used installation). Or since it is a HD, install a SSD 480's are cheap these days. Of course if you use it then, you may realise you did not need a new laptop.

dogmaryxx

MinuteNoodles said:

Ignore all the above. if it is a convential mechanical drive use the free version of the following software from Blancco .

          Please show link to the free version for personal use.