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    Wiping HDD completely before sending to laptoptraderexpress

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by surge101, May 17, 2012.

  1. surge101

    surge101 Notebook Guru

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    I am selling a laptop to Sell Laptop Online | Sell Your Laptop | Laptop Trader Express
    My first question is what free software is available to completely wipe my drive to make sure none of my personal information is available.
    Second question is, will laptoptraderexpress.com devalue my laptop because it is coming without an OS? Or does that not matter? I have the Asus recovery disks, but I am not sure if that will work once the HDD has been completely wiped.
     
    surge101, May 17, 2012
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  2. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    What are the specs of your computer and what did they quote you for it? (based on what I saw on the front page, their quotes seem to be very low... You can probably do better on eBay)

    If you want to erase the hard drive, you can try burn to CD/DVD and run Darik's Boot And Nuke. Also: How to install DBAN on a USB stick
     
    namaiki, May 18, 2012
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  3. surge101

    surge101 Notebook Guru

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    it is an asus u52f, i3, 500GB HDD, 4GB Ram, I had it in the marketplace here for a while with no interest. They offered me $180. I have the DBAN going right now, i'll just install ubuntu on it afterwards and send it in with that.
     
    surge101, May 18, 2012
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  4. Qing Dao

    Qing Dao Notebook Deity

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    Reinstall the OS using the recovery disks and do a low level format when you do that.

    DBAN is a complete waste of time. It is for the tinfoil hat crowd and the uninformed. A full format just writing all zeros to the drive does the same exact thing. The only way to recover any other data from the drive in that scenario would be to crack open the drive and use special equipment only the likes of the NSA and CIA have at their disposal...

    If the drive writes all zeros to the platters, it can't possibly read anything other than zeros from the platters. Deleted data can only be recovered from hard drives if it was never written over. I really don't know why so many people treat this as a black art. And even if you didn't write anything over and just did a quick format to your existing drive, let's be real, the chance of anything coming from it is infinitesimally small.
     
    Qing Dao, May 18, 2012
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  5. surge101

    surge101 Notebook Guru

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    so... when I did the normal recovery it would have been fine?
     
    surge101, May 18, 2012
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  6. Qing Dao

    Qing Dao Notebook Deity

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    IF when you did so you deleted the partitions and did not select quick format when asked to reformat the hard drive.
     
    Qing Dao, May 18, 2012
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