I want to sell 2 older laptops, How do I ensure that everything is wiped clean from the hard drives?

Question

I have a Dell Inspriron and a Dell Latitude Laptop. Before I take them in I want to insure that I have wiped both hard drives clean, how do I do that? Besides deleting everything?

Answer 1

ONLY way for SURE is to replace the hard drives

Answer 2

My laptop came with a disk that restores only the original software.  So it 'reimages' the hard drive to how it was when I bought it.  My understanding is that most computers come with this sort of disk.  It's usually used for emergencies, but you can use it to make sure that there is nothing on your hard drive that wasn't there before you bought it.  When you run it, it usually has an option to format the whole hard drive before restoring the original software.  Hope that this helps.

Answer 3

take a hammer to them?

lol, you want to wipe them clean without deleting everything. there are traces or what you've done, where you've been, passwords, etc in registry, temp files, and in places were you've forgotten you've put stuff.

just reformat them with a shredding program or they can easily recover anything you've put on them.

seriously, if the data is extremely sensitive destroy the drives.

Answer 4

If you have the backup or an OS disk, I would recommend just wiping the whole thing and then reinstalling the operating system and whatever else you might feel necessary. If you have OS repair disk, just pop that in the computer at start-up and follow the directions on-screen, choosing the "Reinstall" option instead of the "Repair" one. Be sure to uncompartmentalize all the drives, then re compartmentalize it all (you'll see what I mean when you get there), as this will wipe the drives. Just be aware that the information may not actually be gone, the system just can't see it anymore.

Answer 5

If you have a copy of killdisk, run that at start up to make sure you wipe everything off, if you haven't I think you can find a free copy on the the internet, then you can re-install your operating system

Answer 6

laptops resources & information-

http://7h.com/

Answer 7

Format your laptops more than once. Don't do a quick format, do a FULL format for your laptops. Formatting it more than once will erase the hard drives each time.

And even if the other person is able to recover your files, they will only be able to recover parts of the files, thus they can't access the files. Delete everything and then full format it a couple of times to be safe.