Security selling old laptop?

fartyarse · 17-11-2014 12:41pm #1

Hey all

Total technophobe here, so I hope you can help me.

I am selling my old laptop, have had for four years, am getting a small few bob for it. I Googled how to wipe it of all data, so I did that successfully, it's now back to factory settings and when I switch it on it goes to the 'begin with your new laptop' style screen.

Just wondering is there anything else I need to do? Friend of mine has me paranoid now that someone could still obtain personal data from it? I'm no CIA agent but obviously I'd rather nobody got my details.

Thanks!

Alanstrainor · 17-11-2014 12:56pm

Question is, what exactly did you do to "wipe it".

Unless you ran an application to comprehensively wipe it, then all your data, or at least a lot of it would be retrievable if someone wanted it. It would take about 10 minutes of time on google to find methods to retrieve info.

If you just put the Windows disk back in, and reinstalled, then although it appears wiped, it isn't necessarily.

That being said, I don't know how paranoid I'd be about it, the data most likely isn't valuable (at a guess...), so whether it's worth the effort or not is up to you.

fartyarse · 17-11-2014 1:10pm

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Question is, what exactly did you do to "wipe it".

Unless you ran an application to comprehensively wipe it, then all your data, or at least a lot of it would be retrievable if someone wanted it. It would take about 10 minutes of time on google to find methods to retrieve info.

If you just put the Windows disk back in, and reinstalled, then although it appears wiped, it isn't necessarily.

That being said, I don't know how paranoid I'd be about it, the data most likely isn't valuable (at a guess...), so whether it's worth the effort or not is up to you.

Oh I've nothing hugely sensitive, just photos and that.

Friend says they would rather just scrap the laptop rather than sell it.

ED E · 17-11-2014 1:22pm

As long as you've done a proper drive wipe with the likes of DBAN then you're fine.

looking_around · 17-11-2014 11:19pm

To be fair, most people aren't after your data, and certainly not after your photo's.

What some people might be after/and might be concerned about is accounts or passwords.

You're probably worrying over nothing.
And your friend is super paranoid, if they'd scrap the whole laptop, what a waste.

Capt'n Midnight · 19-11-2014 8:42pm

if you haven't done a wipe thats taken hours then the disk isn't wiped

use something like sdelete from microsoft to wipe the free space left after reimaging

also note some restores won't affect a second partition - like if you have another drive letter

TerrorFirmer · 20-11-2014 11:04am

The odds of a buyer actually running the hard drive through recovery software 'just because' is also very far fetched.

Even so, you can

1) securely wipe the drive with software
2) manually copy enough files over the fill the hard drive and overwrite existing information
3) sell it without the hard drive

Anyone who says they'd rather scrap the laptop is being silly to be honest.

MarkR · 20-11-2014 11:11am

If you have a recovery partition, it's going to be a little more difficult. If you have recovery disks, it's pretty easy.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2155347/how-to-guarantee-your-data-is-truly-deleted-before-recycling-old-pcs-and-drives.html

Security selling old laptop?

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