Is a fresh install enough before selling an old PC? (or should I do a long format)

[Nvidiaguy07]

Getting rid of my oldest PC. Did a fresh install of windows, and set up basic things so I can show it to the person before selling.

In hindsight, I probably should have done a long reformat to zero out the drive before selling. How big of a deal is it to do this? I'm guessing that the data will be extremely hard to recover since I got rid of the last install and did a fresh install of windows.

There wasnt anything really important on the PC that I would even care if anyone found - the only thing I worry about is a person somehow being able to use my google account because of something saved on this PC (I use two factor btw). Also I had steam installed at one time - so same thing there (2 factor on that too).

Is my google/steam account safe enough to sell it as is? Or should I zero out the drive and reinstall windows again?

 

[RolandJS]

When the computer is idle for awhile, you can use ccleaner's wipe free (empty) byte-space. Once you start that, it is best to not do any big-time explorer.exe operations until it is finished.

 

[Unico]

Doesn’t sound like you have any sensitive data on the drive, and you are using 2 factor authentication for the accounts you mentioned. So sDelete from MS SysInternals, or CCleaner should be fine to wipe free space on the drive.

However if it was me, I’d run sDelete, and then do a reinstall of Win10 with a full format. But I’m naturally paranoid.

 

[John Connor]

I ran that Ccleaner crap and I was still able to recover data. You want to use DBAN if this is a platter or Parted Magic if it's a SSD. Formatting does NOTHING! I was able to recover from a format.

 

[RolandJS]

Thanks JohnC for updating my knowledge about ccleaner's wipe free space. I was under the impression that ccleaner's wipe free space would fill every free sector with Zeroes or something. JohnC, also, I thought Full Format also fills every sector with Zero -- am I incorrect?

 

[RLGL]

Write zeros to the drive, nothing can be recovered conventional software, the military or the NSA may be able to recover after zeros. Writing zeros is not the same as formatting

 

[John Connor]

I thought Full Format also fills every sector with Zero -- am I incorrect?

I can tell you that I recovered my HDD from a full format. Perhaps a software that really low level formats like the manufacture would make the data disappear, but your best bet is DBAN or Parted Magic.

 

[RolandJS]

What program was used to do that full format; I'm puzzled.

 

[John Connor]

There is no real way to do a true full format. And it won't blank the disk.

I used some DOS thing and I can't remember its name.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

DBAN is good for spinning rust, yes. I specialize in low and mid-level data recovery (i.e., nothing more complicated than "dammit we need another identical circuit board this one's fried" or "well, nuts, partitions are gone, we need to try block-carving...") and it's amazing what you can recover when you think you've erased everything.

Supposedly one run of zero-filling is enough to make data mostly unrecoverable, but I'm paranoid. I usually boot off a Linux stick and do a few runs of dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdwhatever first, *then* zero-fill. Then run the ATA Secure Erase command. Overkill? Maybe. I just don't want anyone getting hurt.

 

[RLGL]

Usually the mfgr of the drive has a utility that will write zeros to the disk. Also Asus has a utility in their bios that will also write zeros