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    Formatting my laptop prior to sale?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Meng-Chieh, Aug 7, 2008.

  1. Meng-Chieh

    Meng-Chieh Newbie

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    Hi guys. I'm selling my Toshiba M60 lappy and prior to shipping I'd like to format the entire harddrive (divided into 4 partitions). I first deleted the files using the recycle bin, and then I right-clicked on each drive under My Computer and chose format under properties. My question is, how complete is this formatting? Can people still recover my files after a reformat. Would several rounds of reformatting using XP make it harder to recover my data?
     
    Meng-Chieh, Aug 7, 2008
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  2. disciplined

    disciplined Notebook Geek

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    use DBAN: http://www.dban.org/

    Even the CIA uses it to wipe their drives.

    It's free and as secure as you can get. You burn it on a disk and boot from it so you don't have to load windows.
     
    disciplined, Aug 7, 2008
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  3. Meng-Chieh

    Meng-Chieh Newbie

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    Thank you for the reply. I take it that after DBAN wipes the drive, I'll still be able to pop in the recovery disc supplied by Toshiba to install a fresh copy of Windows - i.e. it won't turn the hdd into a useless one? (Sorry if this is a dumb question).
     
    Meng-Chieh, Aug 7, 2008
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  4. disciplined

    disciplined Notebook Geek

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    It will return the hard drive to the state it was in back in the factory when the computer was just put together.

    So yes bootable disks will still be usable.
     
    disciplined, Aug 7, 2008
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  5. Meng-Chieh

    Meng-Chieh Newbie

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    Excellent. Thanks.
     
    Meng-Chieh, Aug 7, 2008
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  6. bmwrob

    bmwrob Notebook Virtuoso

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    DBan is an excellent app which I use, too, but read all the instructions, advice, etc, BEFORE use.
     
    bmwrob, Aug 8, 2008
    #6