How to completely wipe a PC?

travelodger

I've just bought a secondhand pc as it has Win10 and a higher spec than mine. My man friend has asked that I give him my old PC. I am 100% fine with this EXCEPT...

I have had in the past a lot of personal stuff to do with a previous boyfriend on here .. documents, private photos etc. Obviously I have deleted them in the usual way, however, he is a bit of an expert on computers. I know years ago he was formally trained as a laptop engineer and what worries me is that, having heard that "nothing is ever filly wiped" he might be able to restore stuff I deleted years ago.

I don't want to tell him about these private things I don't want him to see, and I cannot get out of giving or selling him my old pc.

How can I make 100% certain he cannot possibly access my deleted files?

Cisco001

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/secure-erase-ssd-or-hard-drive

km1500

yes you need to wipe the hard drive and make sure that you know what you're doing and that it is definitely wiped because otherwise it is a fairly trivial matter to undelete things that have been deleted (although not everything can be undeleted especially if it has been overwritten)

the above link shows you how to do it but  a good first step would be to copy as many random files as you can to the hard drive until it is full up

steven141

This is interesting, is this the same for a smartphone? When selling something for example an iPhone you erase all content and settings but it never truly wipes it. How is this safe or is it because everything is stored on the cloud that it’s safe?

LightFlare

Take the hard drive out completely and give him the rest.

If hes that knowledgeable, then fitting a drive shouldn't be too much of a challenge and they are pretty cheap

Find your own fun and imaginative ways to make the extracted drive totally and 100% useless

km1500

steven141 said:

This is interesting, is this the same for a smartphone? When selling something for example an iPhone you erase all content and settings but it never truly wipes it. How is this safe or is it because everything is stored on the cloud that it’s safe?

storage in smartphones is encrypted but in any case there is an option on a smartphone to wipe the phone prior to selling it. 

EnPointe

travelodger said:

I've just bought a secondhand pc as it has Win10 and a higher spec than mine. My man friend has asked that I give him my old PC. I am 100% fine with this EXCEPT...

I have had in the past a lot of personal stuff to do with a previous boyfriend on here .. documents, private photos etc. Obviously I have deleted them in the usual way, however, he is a bit of an expert on computers. I know years ago he was formally trained as a laptop engineer and what worries me is that, having heard that "nothing is ever filly wiped" he might be able to restore stuff I deleted years ago.

I don't want to tell him about these private things I don't want him to see, and I cannot get out of giving or selling him my old pc.

How can I make 100% certain he cannot possibly access my deleted files?

new HDD  or SSD   with a fresh install and retain the current HDD  yourself

pseudodox

Remove the hard drive, buy a case for it & use it as an external hard drive - you might even then retain whatever is on there.  Easy job for someone with even a little knowledge to put in a new hard drive.

PHK

steven141 said:

This is interesting, is this the same for a smartphone? When selling something for example an iPhone you erase all content and settings but it never truly wipes it. How is this safe or is it because everything is stored on the cloud that it’s safe?

Smartphones and modern PCs encrypt the data they store. Without the encryption key (which is nearly always related to your password) you can't access the information even if the storage wasn't wiped. Plus when a smartphone is reset it overwrites the storage. 

Heedtheadvice

I would be happy doing pseudodox advice and keeping access to what I have stored and using it for backup ( you should have one even if not keeping this data).

However there is an issue of trust. You do not trust him so is he a good enough freind but notwithstanding that you might want to delete everything in case he decides to snoop....

cerebus

Just pull the hard drive and explain that you will be keeping it (you don't need to tell him why) and you are selling him the pc without it 

If he's not happy with that , tough , especially if you are giving it to him for free