How do I clean up my computer before selling it?
And I don’t mean wiping the dust off. How do I clean it up so the person I sell it to can’t access my personal information (such as account numbers, risque pics of my girlfriend, etc.)?
Mail this post
Tagged with: account numbers • pics of my girlfriend
Filed under: Clean Up Computer
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Two simple steps
1) Reformat your computer
2) Run DBAN. Boot disk that will allow you to quickly and securely wipe the contents of almost any hard disk
smash up the hard drive with a hammer
you could start off with getting a disk and/or it might already have something on it. but anyway for the disk put it in and there should be a pop up, just do what it says(but if there ism’t go were the disk is and run the disk. if there is already something on it that wipes off the hard drive press the button and either it will ask you what to do or do it automaticaly.
hope it helps=)
File Shredder, free download.
Use the "35 pass Guttman" "wipe free space" a couple of times after you’ve deleted all you need to.
It will take about 2 hours for every 100 gig of free space.
http://www.fileshredder.org/
Hopefully you should still have the operating server disk such as the windows XP disk or Vista
This link should help for windows XP:
http://www.datarecovery.com.sg/data_recovery/reformat_your_computer.htm
Or for vista:
http://www.cyberwalker.com/article/723/46
Hope this helps.
THE MOST SAFEST METHOD FOR OTHER PEOPLE NOT TO ACCESS YOUR FILES IS:
Using a low level format for harddisk
because if you sometimes use only the normal format some other kinda use file recovery and they can get your files
IF you have bank accounts or precious information that you have stored on your computer low level formatting is the best thing i could tell you to do
if your just storing ordinary files like ordinary computer users (doc, ppt etc.)
just format the drive and install a fresh copy of windows
BYTHEWAY you can get the low level formatting from seatools, maxtor powermax, seagate diskwizard etc.)
you can reformat your computer is ok!