Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Clean hard drive before selling

Ok all, it just depends on how far you want to take it and what the PC has been used for also who will you be selling it to And what they want to do with it? And how desperate you think someone will be to get thier hands on your info?

But I must admit I would not be bothered going to the trouble of a new HDD.

Sorry Ste, but you're wrong. "Like i said, data can ALWAYS be recovered!"

That is of course true, until you actually delete something by mistake or your hard drive crashes and you don't notice until it has been overwritten. Then, believe me there is no chance of you getting your data back without paying a fortune to a drive recovery company..... There are plenty of programs out there that CLAIM to recover lost data, but few that actually work well. They only ever work on the basis that the data is not deleted, but simply removed from the directory, so the file name Fred.doc becomes ?red.doc and Windows, Linux, etc. ignores it as existing. The recovery programs work on the basis of simply putting back the first character and hey presto, your data is magically back, but ONLY if the sectors on the drive have not been overwritten by more data in the meantime.

I work in the IT business and have done for over 35 years and we do have to securely erase disks. There are several programs out there, some freeware, or available on cover disks that will write random patterns over all the empty space on the drive, after you have deleted the files using the operating system. Once that is done, there are extremely few ways to recover it without some extremely specialist equipment and even then it will be only parts of it that can be recovered. Forensic type software won't be able to read it.

Download CCleaner, it has a 'wipe disc' function. It sets every bit to 'O'.

I 2nd Darik's Boot and Nuke... http://www.dban.org/

Download app, create CD and run. 1 pass is all that is required really to securely wipe a drive, more than that is overkill.

After one pass of overwriting data with 1's & 0's pretty much renders the disk unrecoverable even with the disk dismantled and trying to use methods of inspecting individual platters by some of the biggest data recovery companies out there.

Data can be recovered by these free apps when you've recently deleted it. the more you use the PC, the more of the old deleted data get scrubbed over with new data.

One last thing, if you run the DBAN (boot and nuke) the disk will be blank. with out a restore CD / Windows CD / Drivers, the laptop will not appeal to those people want a PC but can't reload it themselves.