Securely Wipe Data Windows 10 Laptop

ajmull

I want ot hand on a Win 10 laptop to a relative. I would like to securely wipe all data from the HD but to retain as many programs as possible. I know you can do a factory reset but that seems a bit severe. Any suggestions for an easy, not too technical way??

D3V!L

Are they personal files etc ?

deckie27

Windows and programs hide information all over the place.

If you get everything deleted
and removed from recycle bin
you could fill the hard drive up with data
remove the data

do a disk defrag

fill up again
remove
do another defrag

the FBI would get bit of old data off it but o the average go there won't be much left

ajmull

D3V!L wrote: »

Are they personal files etc ?

Yes, the usual stuff.

unkel

ajmull wrote: »

I want ot hand on a Win 10 laptop to a relative. I would like to securely wipe all data from the HD but to retain as many programs as possible.

Not possible

ajmull wrote: »

I know you can do a factory reset

That will not securely wipe any data

ajmull wrote: »

Any suggestions for an easy, not too technical way??

Only easy way is to physically remove the hard drive and utterly destroy it, i.e. pulverise it. All alternative methods are more technical and require software that overwrites every single byte of storage with a zero or a one a few times

Gyck

deckie27 wrote: »

Windows and programs hide information all over the place.

If you get everything deleted
and removed from recycle bin
you could fill the hard drive up with data
remove the data

do a disk defrag

fill up again
remove
do another defrag

the FBI would get bit of old data off it but o the average go there won't be much left

I think it's the 'remove' part that the OP is most interested in, how do you suggest they achieve this? And I don't get what a defrag is going to achieve in relation to wiping data?

Doing a quick Google brings up plenty relating to wiping disks but after a 3 minute peruse I couldn't find anything regarding a secure wipe while retaining the OS and applications. How many applications do you want to retain? Do you have the serial numbers?

If the number of applications is low and you have/don't need serial numbers, I'd be inclined to wipe everything. You could record any required serial numbers and reset win 10 and reinstall the applications - this isn't particularly time consuming or difficult to do. If you're really paranoid, then fully wipe the disk - use something like Dban, which is very easy to use, and do a full reinstall of the OS and applications, then do a reinstall of win 10 plus the applications.

If you're not really that paranoid, why go to the trouble in the first place? Just delete the personal files. If you think your relation is interested in trying to recover what you deleted, I'd ask yourself why are you gifting the laptop to them in the first place?

Take out the drive and replace it. Drives are cheap.

Or wipe it with 1s, and then reinstall.

smuggler.ie

If not to much paranoid about someone trying to restore/recover data...
Create new user(admin), sign out of your user account, sign in with new account, delete your original user profile and account if you will
All soft stay, data gone(still might be recoverable by third party soft until overwritten by use of laptop by new owner)


Bare in mind that, laptop(OS license) might still tied to your MS account, soft might be registered to your account.

ED E

Export the current driverstore.
Create a W10 USB key (Media Creation Tool)
DBAN
Install windows.

Forget the programs, new owners problem.

bunderoon

Google DBAN.

Not difficult to run and wipe a laptop with it.
Plenty of how-tos on the internet.

VanHalen

Go to settings,update & security, recovery, reset this PC. Depending on what option you take (delete everything) this will remove your data as well.

FishOnABike

If it has a HDD rather than a SSD use an application like Eraser
https://eraser.heidi.ie
or CCleaner
https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner

Johnboy1951

Clean up the drive ..... removing and properly deleting files etc.
Defrag then would probably help

Write to all the free space until filled up ..... write zeros or ones or a random pattern into a file until it will take no more.
Delete the file, and recovery of anything useful in that empty space is near impossible.

Multiple writes are unnecessary and achieve nothing more than a single write .... unless you are doing it on floppy drives or HDDs of the same era!

ajmull

Thank you everyone for your help. I'll do a factory reset and forget trying to save programs. Data files are fully backed up anyway.

HugoRune

I reset two Windows 10 PCs last week using the method VanHalen suggested above. The reset programme (I found it by searching for 'reset') had a secure wipe option which it said would take several hours, so I didn't bother. It reset to factory default (no programs or data) but with all the up-to-date Windows updates installed which was pretty good.

FishOnABike

HugoRune wrote: »

I reset two Windows 10 PCs last week using the method VanHalen suggested above. The reset programme (I found it by searching for 'reset') had a secure wipe option which it said would take several hours, so I didn't bother. It reset to factory default (no programs or data) but with all the up-to-date Windows updates installed which was pretty good.

The problem if you don't do a secure wipe is that it is very simple for someone to recover most of your data using any one of a number of freely available and simple to use data recovery utilities.