I would like to erase all data on my laptop before passing it on, any recommendations?

Thanks,

Raf

Depends how seriously you mean..

If you mean CIA level then I suggest an industrial blender !!!

For mere mortals, formatting the hard disc, doing a secure low leval format possibly combines with a secure erase (over writing old data with 1's and 0's) and then re-installing windows fresh.. That should be enough.

If your worried about your banking and credit card info you can use route 2, if your worried about the chemical weapons plans.. Use route 1..

if your worried about the chemical weapons plans.. Use route 1..

I think he should use option 1.

RAF = Royal Air Force

RAF = Red Army Faction

Stamp

disk ko - do multiple rewrites of HD.

I would like to erase all data on my laptop before passing it on, any recommendations?

Thanks,

Raf

One-pass random data write is enough. "Gutmann" or DoD methods are absolutely unnecessary for a modern drives; they are obsolete, don't waste your time.

While I cannot recommend particular software (we do it from a command line booting from Linux Live CD in the company), I would suggest what you stay away from DOS-based solutions. Most of them are very slow because they don't use DMA transfer mode; however, some of them might use the internal drive erasing algorithm.

80Gb one-pass erase should take 1-2 hours depending on the drive age.

eraser.

heidi.ie/eraser/

OPPS its free by the way

DBAN (Derik's Boot and Nuke).

http://dban.sourceforge.net/

The above HD wipes will remove all data from the HD including the Windows (?) Operating System.

Something that does between 4 and 20 read/write operations to the entire disk surface is considered good enough by most security agencies. This is the best way to ensure that you are not leaving anything to be found.

After that reinstall a basic operating system from OS install disks - not your back ups. That way you are passing on a working computer with a virgin OS. Whether you patch it and install applications is up to you and the deal you have in passing it on to a friend or selling. If selling people prefer seeing the thing work.

The longer less secure method is to delete all your files by hand, for most people this will be all .DOC, .XLS, .JPG and .GIF files. Fairly easy to find with explorer. Then remove all your browsing favorites, history, cookies and temporary internet files.

Change the size of the swap file.

Then into Explorer and run a defrag.

Depends how clean you need it to be.

Erraser is free will wipe only free space if you wish or selected files or the nuke level will clear the whole disk.  Single write level will work for normal people, three wipe level is way more then enough.  

Oops, sorry, looks like DBAN uses DMA transfers, should be fast

From Linux LiveCD command line:

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda bs=131072

Change /dev/hda to the actual drive device,

fdisk -l

will show you the drives detected.

Thanks for all your inputs, however as I am planning selling laptop afterwards, buyer will probalby want to have it including WindowsXP (in this case) and all pre-installed programs, so I am still unsure which way to go...as i am no expert at all....

Thanks,

Raf

You don't have any recovery CDs with your laptop? You probably have a recovery partition then. In this case you can wipe all partitions except the recovery one. If you don't wipe them and just go "delete personal files and wipe freespace" way, I can almost guarantee you there will be some personal information left. Will it be sensitive information? Nobody can tell...

Thanks for all your inputs, however as I am planning selling laptop afterwards, buyer will probalby want to have it including WindowsXP (in this case) and all pre-installed programs, so I am still unsure which way to go...as i am no expert at all....

Thanks,

Raf

If you want to leave the XP installation in place, and you don't have a recovery disk, I would:

1. do your best to find and delete all the data you don't want others to have.
   
2. have a competent IT person check to see you that you've done a thorough job. Think about every app you use that would store sensitive data, like Outlook or your tax programs, and remove those data files. Most programs store this data in your user profile, so removing your profile (next step) is a quick way to remove much of this. however, some apps still store the data within their installation folder so some careful inspection of the programs files folder is needed. Remember that un-installers generally only remove what they installed. If you install accounting program X and it creates a data file for you inside the installation folder, then un-installing the app later will most likely remove the app but leave your data behind.
   
3. Ensure all temp folders, cache folders, etc. have been emptied.
   
4. Create a new user profile for the next user, or just the adminstrator account, and delete your old one.
   
5. Empty the recycle bin, then run Eraser on the drive's free space to ensure that all the data deleted in the previous steps cannot be recovered.
   

Like Gregory Morozov stated though, there's still a chance that something could be overlooked and data could be left behind.

B