[ali k]

I'm handing over my old laptop for my parents to use and obviously want to get rid of all the files that are critical for national security (pr0n) before I do so. I just want to remove everything and get it to a state where programs can be installed again (think I still have all the old discs). What's the easiest and safest way for a complete technocretin to do this?

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

If you have the original install/recover discs it's pretty easy to reinstall Windows. Is it XP? Are you happy about losing all your installed software? If you do you should find it runs a lot quicker, so it's a good idea to do if your handing it over for another life. Consider adding more RAM also if you can, should find it cost only a few fuck alls for an old laptop. What make is it?

Plenty of 'how to's' about adding RAM and re-installing Windows on line with walk through screen shots. For Windows you basically put in the discs and read the instructions.

How many discs/partitions are on your machine? Just C:? or has it got a separate one for data?

[slackline]

Consider adding more RAM also if you can, should find it cost only a few fuck alls for an old laptop. What make is it?

My experience is that older RAM is more pricey than the current standard as it gets phased out of production in favour of the newer higher spec.  i.e. DDR  £££ > DDR2 ££ > DDR3 £

Its still worth doing though, and will revitalise the system.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

My experience is that older RAM is more pricey than the current standard as it gets phased out of production in favour of the newer higher spec.  i.e. DDR  £££ > DDR2 ££ > DDR3 £

True if its unusual RAM, I've had this in an old Dell tower than used weird RAM, however my reasoning is that an average 32bit laptop that is 3-5 years old is likely to have shipped with either 0.5 or 1gb of RAM. To max out to 4gb (or whatever it can take) at the time of purchase would have been ££££, now is likely to be £ (as long as it's common RAM as you say)

[MikeF]

Eraser is a great way to overwrite everything you've deleted so it's unrecoverable - might save you having to reinstall etc. Loads of good reviews, always worked for me with old pcs.

"Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns."

http://eraser.heidi.ie/

[slackline]

My experience is that older RAM is more pricey than the current standard as it gets phased out of production in favour of the newer higher spec.  i.e. DDR  £££ > DDR2 ££ > DDR3 £

True if its unusual RAM, I've had this in an old Dell tower than used weird RAM, however my reasoning is that an average 32bit laptop that is 3-5 years old is likely to have shipped with either 0.5 or 1gb of RAM. To max out to 4gb (or whatever it can take) at the time of purchase would have been ££££, now is likely to be £ (as long as it's common RAM as you say)

It was a Dell Laptop (Lattitude X300) that I was looking to upgrade the RAM to about two years ago and toe SO-DIMM DDR for 2Gb (2 x 1Gb) was something like £110 or there abouts which really put me off (although I ended up buying it as I short-circuted the existing RAM chips checking how to remove them  )

[tomtom]

With a soft cloth?

[andyd]

With a soft cloth?

Depends on the usage. To quote Val "semen is such a persistent stain" (L.O.G.).

[lukeh]

On my HP G72 running Windows 7 it was really easy.

Go to Control Panel then 'view by small icons'.

Select Recovery.

In the new window click on Advanced Recovery Methods, the there should be an option for 'returning your computer to its factor settings'.

After clicking that, you follow the steps on screen and after a few restarts (about 15 minutes total) its like it was when it was first out of the box.

You will then need to reinstall your programs, and the windows updates which can take a while, mostly depending on your internet connection.

If your version of windows/laptop does not have this option then I think the general way of reinstalling windows is to put your windows disc (recovery discs can be burn onto a DVD if you don't have one) in the computer and then boot from disc drive (where the computer boots from needs to be changed in the bios, easier than it sounds).

[slackline]

That may not necessarily mean that data has been wiped from the hard-drive, it could just be that the reference to the files location has been removed.

Its also one of many good reasons to keep OS and data on separate partitions.

[lukeh]

That may not necessarily mean that data has been wiped from the hard-drive, it could just be that the reference to the files location has been removed.

Its also one of many good reasons to keep OS and data on separate partitions.

Unless I'm missing something he's just wanting to get it in a clean state for his rents to use without being bombarded with penis enlargement popups and stumbling across folders full of Jenna Jameson. I doubt his parents will actively seek to recover his old files?

[slackline]

Unless I'm missing something he's just wanting to get it in a clean state for his rents to use without being bombarded with penis enlargement popups and stumbling across folders full of Jenna Jameson. I doubt his parents will actively seek to recover his old files?

Yes its unlikely the aforementioned recipients will be savvy enough to recover the data, but this forum and its threads are fairly permanent and I felt it worth pointing out that data can persist even after its been "deleted" should anyone else be searching for a solution where they do wish to genuinely "wipe [a] laptop" to remove any possibility of leaving data on it.  Its also does no harm to get into good practices.

[ali k]

It's an old Dell Inspiron 1525 running Windows Vista (?). They won't need a higher spec than it is already so no need to add extra RAM or anything.

I'm sorry I have no idea what discs/partitions it has.

Luke's right that they won't be actively searching for old files so I just want peace of mind that nothing unsavoury will pop up. So if I have the original install/recover discs I just need to pop them in, follow the instructions and it will return to how it was out of the box?

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

It will wipe the main system disc, if your data is on a separate partition it won't touch it unless you instruct it to. At the start of the install it asks you if you want to format the disc. If you delete any partition everything will go. Have a go. The worse that can happen is you wipe your data!

You might want to first check if you have any built in recovery tools in vista. Not sure if they were new for Win7

[rosmat]

It's an old Dell Inspiron 1525 running Windows Vista (?). They won't need a higher spec than it is already so no need to add extra RAM or anything.

I'm sorry I have no idea what discs/partitions it has.

Luke's right that they won't be actively searching for old files so I just want peace of mind that nothing unsavoury will pop up. So if I have the original install/recover discs I just need to pop them in, follow the instructions and it will return to how it was out of the box?

If thats all you want to do then "yes" - just perform a reinstall using the recovery discs.

If you wish to wipe an entire disk before you pass it on, then I'd recommend Darik’s Boot and Nuke, a boot disk that will automatically and completely delete data on any detected hard disk. *You will then need to perform a re-install using the install / recovery disk.

Link to Darik's here: http://www.dban.org/

[Paul B]

I second that recommendation.

[lukeh]

So if I have the original install/recover discs I just need to pop them in, follow the instructions and it will return to how it was out of the box?

Yea, the discs should do the trick, but...

It's an old Dell Inspiron 1525 running Windows Vista (?).

based on those details you might not even need the discs, just press F8 just after you restart. Follow the details right at the bottom of the this link:

Restoring the Computer to the Default Factory Configuration

I'm sorry I have no idea what discs/partitions it has.

The discs/partitions can be viewed by going to 'my computer'. On mine I have Local disc (c:), recovery (d:) and HP_Tools (e:). These are all located on my single hard drive, but each one is a different partition. If you have made an additional partition just for storing files in, rather than programs, it might not get wiped during the restore. Chances are that you didn't create an extra one and so have nothing to worry about!



Disclaimer: it will still be possible to recover the files after this sort of restore, but unlikely unless you have valuable data on which someone will what to spend time finding, after getting hold of your drive...




Now, has it stopped raining yet?

[neil h]

personally, I would just take a hammer to your drive and buy a new one, the eraser software does not get rid of stuff, I have some software here that can pull anything back from and drive no matter how much its been wiped.

Its real easy to changed the drive over in a laptop and for the sake of £30 for a new drive

[rosmat]

Dariks over writes every byte with a random selection of bits - not just the references. How does your software recover that - genuinely interested in this.

[neil h]

Dariks over writes every byte with a random selection of bits - not just the references. How does your software recover that - genuinely interested in this.

when you have a friend who works for police computer forensics, you can recover anything  no seriously, The software I use which you can buy online will pretty much recover anything, I tested it by wiping a hard drive with 7 passes on every byte with 9 random numbers on every bit, and I still managed to recover old credit card info. Even Mr unclesomebody who is very good with computers and knows how to wipe drives like you wouldn't believe, I ran my software on his and we pulled back entire films which he had no idea he had ever downloaded.

Im not 100% on how the software works myself, just my ploice friend told me about it and I was interested in seeing it work and it does, to be honest its mainly used for pulling images that have been viewed on internet,

I was reading on internet about the government hard drives, they say they only way to truly destroy all info is to incinerate the drives they use...

All I would say, is not everyone knows what they are doing so the likely hood of anyone recovering any info from your drive is pretty low, but personally I would just burn the drive and stick a new one in just to be sure

[neil h]

sorry but if dariks is so good, how come on there site it says:


    No guarantee that data is removed
    Limited hardware support (e.g. no RAID dismantling)
    No customer support
 

[rosmat]

Dariks over writes every byte with a random selection of bits - not just the references. How does your software recover that - genuinely interested in this.

when you have a friend who works for police computer forensics, you can recover anything  no seriously, The software I use which you can buy online will pretty much recover anything, I tested it by wiping a hard drive with 7 passes on every byte with 9 random numbers on every bit, and I still managed to recover old credit card info. Even Mr unclesomebody who is very good with computers and knows how to wipe drives like you wouldn't believe, I ran my software on his and we pulled back entire films which he had no idea he had ever downloaded.

Im not 100% on how the software works myself, just my ploice friend told me about it and I was interested in seeing it work and it does, to be honest its mainly used for pulling images that have been viewed on internet,

I was reading on internet about the government hard drives, they say they only way to truly destroy all info is to incinerate the drives they use...

All I would say, is not everyone knows what they are doing so the likely hood of anyone recovering any info from your drive is pretty low, but personally I would just burn the drive and stick a new one in just to be sure

Thanks, interesting info.

How does it put 9 random numbers on every bit? A bit can only be 1 or 0? Even a byte is only able to hold 8 occurances of 1 or 0? Confused.

[rosmat]

sorry but if dariks is so good, how come on there site it says:


    No guarantee that data is removed
    Limited hardware support (e.g. no RAID dismantling)
    No customer support
 

That is just because it is open source and not a commercial propostion. They would need staff and an infrastructure to provide customer support etc.

[slackline]

Dariks over writes every byte with a random selection of bits - not just the references. How does your software recover that - genuinely interested in this.

when you have a friend who works for police computer forensics, you can recover anything  no seriously, The software I use which you can buy online will pretty much recover anything, I tested it by wiping a hard drive with 7 passes on every byte with 9 random numbers on every bit, and I still managed to recover old credit card info. Even Mr unclesomebody who is very good with computers and knows how to wipe drives like you wouldn't believe, I ran my software on his and we pulled back entire films which he had no idea he had ever downloaded.

Im not 100% on how the software works myself, just my ploice friend told me about it and I was interested in seeing it work and it does, to be honest its mainly used for pulling images that have been viewed on internet,

I was reading on internet about the government hard drives, they say they only way to truly destroy all info is to incinerate the drives they use...

All I would say, is not everyone knows what they are doing so the likely hood of anyone recovering any info from your drive is pretty low, but personally I would just burn the drive and stick a new one in just to be sure

Thanks, interesting info.

Yes, thats very, very interesting, because in essence it implies you can therefore store infinite amounts of data on a hard-drive if it is still recoverable after being over-written a number of times.

What is the name of this magic software?

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

If its that easy to recover complete files how come it its so hard and expensive to do when a drive corrupts or fails?