clearing laptop data

PittSpeed Automotive PittSpeed Off Topic
1

Im selling an old Gateway Solo 9950 and want to clear all the data. Whats the easiest way to do that? I don’t have the windows 2000 me disc for it. Im supposed to meet the person tonight whos buying it. The laptop was hardly used so theres not much on it, and nothing on it is really sensitive but I would still like to clear the data before i givce it away.

thx in advance.

2

http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/technology/security/clean-your-hard-drive.aspx

3

dban, then restore with the oem restore disks

4

go into add/remove programs and remove all software you don’t want to give away. log in as local administrator and delete all of the user profiles except administrator. delete any other data you find.

5

This won’t necessarily remove the data from the hard drive. When you put information on a computer it puts the 1s and 0s on any space that is empty according to a big table. When you delete data it doesn’t erase the 1s and 0s from the disk it only deletes the entry from the table allowing it to be over written sometime later. A person would have to be tech savy to retrieve the information but it can potentially be done. If you read that article i posted it describes a few ways to really erase the disk.

6

do you low level format all of your drives before you get rid of them?

Ok, so do the steps I posted above and then run ccleaner’s wipe free space utility, does that make you happy?

And yes, I am aware how info is dealt with on a computer.

7

Thanks for all the tips everyone. Guy came and picked it up last night. I managed to get it cleared and back to factory settings before I sold it. Im doubtful he woul dtry to recover anything anyway.

8

Fair enough
I was just trying to help provide a more complete response than, “delete all your shit”. No reason to get huffy about it.

9

it’s all good. For 99.9% of people, “delete your shit” is more than adequate.

People hear about laptops getting stolen and deleted data being recovered and think that people are after their pic of little Johnny on his tricycle. If you have a government laptop or an HR computer with a ton of social security numbers then yea, you may need to do a little more.