About to sell an older laptop on ebay, what precautions for erasing HDD?

[Marcos]

I dont want to clear the recovery partition, not sure if there is something i can do within XP to flush it out?

There isnt anything too important on it, but a wipe woud be good. Any suggestions?

thanks

[scaryjim]

for selling on ebay:

If you have the install disks for Win XP to sell with it, or you made a recovery disk when you got it, I'd be inclined to wipe the lot, use something like DBAN or file shredder to securely erase the disk, and do a clean install.

If you don't have the install disks then use something like file shredder to securely erase all of your personal files - in fact I'd recommend making a new user account, logging into that one, and running file shredder on all of the other user folders.

Programs like DBAN and file shredder don't just erase a file, they also write over the appropriate bits of the disk with several passes of random data. This makes it practically impossible to recover the deleted files.

[Marcos]

Damn, i thought i had the recovery discs, cant find them. Worse is the recovery discs have been done once so now it wont let me write some more. Oh well, im doing a "destructive recovery" from the built in recovery partition.

I think i'll leave it at that, thanks!

[watercooled]

That won't erase your data - it could be recovered with freely available software. IIRC DBAN has a mode for erasing just one partition and also the recovery partition should (but don't count on it) be in a HPA so DBAN can't touch it anyway.

[spoon_]

Get yourself either DBAN like already mentioned or download removed by admin

[Marcos]

Get yourself either DBAN like already mentioned or downloadremoved by admin

Maaaan, i dont get it, i found the page to this guy's CD, but cant find a download link

[SiM]

It is warez. There are plenty of freeware applications that will do the job.

[watercooled]

Yeah I wouldn't bother with it you only need one utility off it really ie DBAN. This is the one you need: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dba...6.zip?download just be careful you select your partition, not the whole disk. As I said before the recovery partition should be protected but that doesn't mean it will be so double-check.

[spoon_]

Maaaan, i dont get it, i found the page to this guy's CD, but cant find a download link

<removed by admin>

Click download



DBAN can be downloaded from HERE

Burn on a CD and boot your lappy from it. Job done.

[Marcos]

thanks

useful CD for the future, my brother just shotgunned this laptop so looks like i dont need to do an erase after all!

[Saracen]

[QUOTE=spoon_;1789894]

Maaaan, i dont get it, i found the page to this guy's CD, but cant find a download link

<removed by admin>

Click download


....

Please be more careful what you post links to. I know you're trying to help, and that's why no further action will be taken at this point, but SiM even pointed out that that CD, however useful many people may find it, is warez. It contains many commercial packages that they do not have the right to distribute.

And, that wink after the click download leads me to be very suspicious that you knew it was illegal when posting it.

Hexus cannot endorse copyright infringement and will not allow it to be facilitated on here. What members do on their own computers is entirely up to them, but we have to draw a line on here, and links to pirate software cross it.


Oh, and in case anyone thinks its amusing to ask "what CD", you can guess and you'd probably be right, because it's pretty well-known, but if a discussion ensues that results in it being named again, I'm not going to see the funny side, and anyone involved risks losing their account access for a while.

As Sim and watercooled both pointed out, there's plenty of free software that will do the job, so please don't take this thread into pirate software again.

[Marcos]

Hey you had me worried there for a sec because you quoted me not spoon_, looks like you're grilling me

but yeah, i know you're doing your job