I am giving my laptop away and I want to make it so that the hard drive on the computer is like new. Is there anybody here who is really good with this stuff who can help me? JAK.
I am giving my laptop away and I want to make it so that the hard drive on the computer is like new. Is there anybody here who is really good with this stuff who can help me? JAK.
First and foremost. Do you have an Installation CD to install a new operating system on it? If not the only choice available is to go through and hand delete every thing you have added onto to it including any programs you have installed. It is actually easier to buy a new HD and a new operating system.
If you have the installation Cd simply reformat your HDD (Reformat at least 4 times to be certain virtually everything is gone) and reinstall the OS
But if you are giving it to a relative and it is your desire they have a workable Laptop. You can pretty well clean it up by going through and deleting everything you had put on it.
As uncle Woodrow said, don't erase (or format) all the disk unless you really need to, and in case you need to erase it make sure you have an operating system installation CD and also make sure if you can manage to find and reinstall the hardware drivers of your PC (like the sound card, etc.), some Operating System can install your hardware automatically, but may be some hardware should be installed manually.
To format your disk, you can use the OS Installation CD to format your disk and reinstall a new OS, or you can use a disk utility like PartitionMagic or GParted, and then reinstall the OS.
Last edited by marwen; 03-08-2011 at 02:16 PM.
"O you who believe! Fear ALLAH as He should be feared" [aal 'Imraan, 102]
I am giving it away to a relative but I don't necessarily trust this person. Also, it is a male relative (non mahram) and I wouldn't want to leave any chance for him or his friends to uncover anything that was stored on this computer, especially pictures. He's a good kid but he's in college and lives with a few other guys from college, two of which are computer science majors, from what I can recall. I know that the chance for them getting nosy is small, but I'd like to avoid it inshallah. I don't want to just reformat or erase my hard drive, I want to wipe out the hard disk, if possible. By the way, I don't have the OS CD because it already came installed on my computer.
I am giving it away to a relative but I don't necessarily trust this person. Also, it is a male relative (non mahram) and I wouldn't want to leave any chance for him or his friends to uncover anything that was stored on this computer, especially pictures. He's a good kid but he's in college and lives with a few other guys from college, two of which are computer science majors, from what I can recall. I know that the chance for them getting nosy is small, but I'd like to avoid it inshallah. I don't want to just reformat or erase my hard drive, I want to wipe out the hard disk, if possible. By the way, I don't have the OS CD because it already came installed on my computer.
Do a few passes with the tool in the link I gave. I think government agencies use 7 passes. If you are still paranoid after that; remove the hard drive, because nothing is going to be more secure than that
All you have to do is save the important stuff on a externer harddrive or a USB (16 GB) and then do as the others said So you have all your important stuff still there.
JAK brother. After doing that, do I need to reinstall the OS?
I don't have the CD because it came installed on the computer. Can I somehow use the product key that I have and reinstall it online somehow?
Yes it will wipe everything.
Ask him to be sure, but if his friends are studying computing then they will almost certainly have an OS cd. If not, you can install Ubuntu or try to get a disk from Microsoft (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326246) (or download one yourself through illegal means).
First download a wipe hard disk utility. There are many free ones available. Google is your friend. This utility will overwrite each and every bit of space on your hard disk with another bit of random data. Since two bits of data cannot simultaneously exist in the same space, after wiping your hard disk, there should be nothing left of whatever you had on it before.
However, if you want to give away a working hard disk, you need to do a bit more work. First download Ubuntu and burn it on a cd. This is free and legal. After you have wiped your hard disk, re-install the operating system with the Ubuntu cd. There are many versions of Linux but Ubuntu is the closest to Windows in its interface and, if the new user only uses the laptop to surf the net, he would not notice any difference. By the way, Firefox runs better in Ubuntu than in Windows.
If you are really worried that there might be some residual data that the new user might be able to unearth, you have to do a bit more work than that. Download Restorer 2000 Pro. There is a free trial version. I have used this software to recover data from a hard disk that had its partition table destroyed, re-formatted and operating system re-installed. If you cannot recover anything with this software, then you might be home free.
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So you have all your important stuff still there.
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