[Closed] Selling old laptop. Hard drive wipe or replace ?

Do a full reinstall of Windows, including a reformat of the hard disk. The NSA will be able to recover the data, but nobody else is going to go the that sort of trouble and expense just on the tiny chance that you have any data that is of any interest.

Are you a high value target with sensitive information on your hard drive? No? Then wipe it, if you are feeling paranoid.

Thanks. Didn’t think I was being paranoid in my original post.
The hdd has been used for cad models which include some high profile clients so probably best to replace the drive as they’re only £25 anyway.

Are you running Windows 10? And selling with an OS? Just "reset my PC" and choose a fresh install which will effectively trash all partitions and re-format before installing a fresh Windows 10 OS.

Yes it's windows 10.
It's a 3xs gaming laptop from scan which I've had 3 years.
Thanks for the info.

I work in 'cybersecurity' and could happily explain various methods of military-grade secure erasure.

But the fact is, you're not that important. Whilst technically possible, realistically no-one is going to be undertaking a forensic reconstruction of your drive costing thousands. Flatten it, pass it on.

Stealth ad aside, what is it and how much do you want for it?

The hdd has been used for cad models which include some high profile clients

If your clients' competitors want to steal data, they would simply bribe disgruntled employees to steal it for them. Nobody's going to buy up random used computers hoping to find some useful CAD data on them.

Cougar, it's beginning to look like a stealth ad lol.

Can't sell it until I have a replacement but might put it on the classifieds once I'm sorted with a new laptop. Will look for around £400

To the rest point taken, no-one gives a toss about used HDD.

To the rest point taken, no-one gives a toss about used HDD.

Cougar does, because he has just socially engineered you into sending it to him.

All your CAD are belong to Cougar.

There're various free programs that will overwrite a drive for you. I've used DBAN in the past, it took most of a day to run its routine, and I can't say if it definitely worked (since I've not tried to recover anything from the drive), but presumably it did.

It might be worth replacing the drive with a new SSD though, since I'm not sure what the market is like for pcs with HDD these days?

I work in ‘cybersecurity’ and could happily explain various methods of military-grade secure erasure

Does it involve tanks and flamethrowers

Personally I'd stick a fresh disk in it, but mostly to keep the old one in case I'd missed any files I needed.

DBAN mentioned above is probably the best bet to make sure you don't end up red faced by any "I bought a random laptop from eBay to see what I could recover" type magazine stories / GCSE projects, though realistically the chances are slim. Don't expect it to be quick though (speaking as someone who wiped an entire server room full of equipment once).

Cougar does, because he has just socially engineered you into sending it to him.

All your CAD are belong to Cougar.

So much gold passes unacknowledged on STW, thought I should call that bit out.

🙂

The hdd has been used for cad models which include some high profile clients

Have the clients not stated how they want their data protected in a contract or anything?

I'll be removing the hard drive and fitting a new one in, like for like.
Then possibly putting the old SSD in an enclosure.

It's minimal cost to me and piece of mind to keep the drive.

I've contacted two clients, one isn't bothered what happens to the drive but the other would prefer me to replace it.

So yea new 256gb drive to be installed.
The other 1tb drive that's in can just be wiped as there's nothing on there except a few games and cad software.

Cheers all.

Cybersecurity is a funny thing. If you get it right you may never know. Which is one of the reasons measures can be a little OTT. One place I worked required physical destruction of disks (it was pretty sensitive info, mind) and this caused some minor issues dealing with vendors who weren't set up to do that. The fact they had perfectly good data destruction in place wasn't in doubt, but it didn't meet the accepted policy.

Whether or not such measures are justified is a whole discussion in itself (99% of the time not justified, IMO). But if you have clients it's worth making sure any contractual obligations you might have are being met.

I always do a '1 sweep' 'overwrite' of drives, it's just one click of a button in ccleaner.
It can take a while to complete, depending on how fast or slow the drive is, but it's just clicking a button really.

Basically, the way windows works is when you delete any file, it's not actually deleted, just the address used to find the file on the disk is deleted so it's not immediatly visible to the operating system any more, and could be overwritten by a new file write request.

By overwrting the whole drive once, or I think the milliatry grade specification is 3 overwrites of the whole drive with duff data, (random ones and zeros, for example) it stops anyone ever reading the files that were on that drive.

Then the drive is good to reformat and use as a spare or sell it or whatever.

To answer the OP's question, what I would personally do is just do a free space drive wipe in ccleaner, 1 pass.

It will take some time, but you know it's done, and all you have to do is click a button.