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Cleaning my hard drive

945 views 6 replies 3 participants last post by  de lange 
#1 ·
I am thinking of dumping my laptop, because to rectify the problems that I am having with it are too costly. But I want to make sure that there is no private details left on the hard drive before I get rid of it. Does formatting the drive do the job???
 
#2 ·
What is the make and model# of your laptop?
A format will erase all data on the drive, but the data can still be accessed with software tools. Most users will not be interested. If you reinstall an OS, it will overwrite any previous files with the new Install.
Geeks will tell you to be perfectly safe you should wipe the drive with a tool like DBAN. But if your selling your computer, you would want to Format it and reinstall an OS so the new owner won't have a blank computer. Also, most laptops have a Recovery Partition that will wipe your data and install Windows and all drivers, to Factory Defaults. If you use DBAN it will wipe the drive including your Recovery Partition
 
#5 ·
just to remind you, if you run dban, you will lose your recovery. You can format the drive. then do the recovery. once the os is installed, download and run recuva deep scan to see if you can find any recoverable personal files.
https://www.piriform.com/recuva

Unless you a selling the computer to some hacker or computer geek, that is usually all you really need to do.

another option is if you never created recovery disks, you should still be able to do it. You can create the disks, run dban then use the disks to recover.

FAQ :: How to create recovery media to be used to reset your computer back to factory settings? :: Support :: Toshiba :: Computers, Laptops/Notebooks, Tablets, Televisions, DVD and Blu-Ray Players, Camcorders, Storage, Accessories, and more
 
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