Selling Laptop & Erasing Data

[quakeworld]

Hi. I have an HP dv9815nr which comes with a system recovery/restore partition. I'm selling it and used the system recovery to re-image the drive. This restored the laptop to its original, default condition (software wise).

Is this enough to make sure that all my data is wiped out?

OS: Vista sp2 (back to sp1 after restore).

thanks.

 

[corkyg]

Probably close enough unless you are dealing with the KGB. You can always do a DoD wipe, but takes a couple of hours on average.

 

[TheStu]

Probably close enough unless you are dealing with the KGB. You can always do a DoD wipe, but takes a couple of hours on average.

The only way to be sure is to do a DoD spec 35 pass zeroing.

Then, remove the platters from the drive and place them each into individual burlap sacks.

Beat them methodically with medium-large rocks for 6 hours each until you have something about the consistency of sand.

Bury each sack in a different state.

Your data is secure.

If that is too much work, then what Corky said is right on the ball.

 

[Jeff7]

Probably close enough unless you are dealing with the KGB. You can always do a DoD wipe, but takes a couple of hours on average.

Yup.

A DBAN boot disk will do the job nicely.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The only way to be sure is to do a DoD spec 35 pass zeroing.

Then, remove the platters from the drive and place them each into individual burlap sacks.

Beat them methodically with medium-large rocks for 6 hours each until you have something about the consistency of sand.

Bury each sack in a different state.

Your data is secure.

If that is too much work, then what Corky said is right on the ball.

So you're not a fan of the cleansing power of fire? (Heat sufficient to melt the platters will also demagnetize them.)

-wh40kpurifyit.jpg-

 

[NickelPlate]

The only way to be sure is to do a DoD spec 35 pass zeroing.

Then, remove the platters from the drive and place them each into individual burlap sacks.

Beat them methodically with medium-large rocks for 6 hours each until you have something about the consistency of sand.

Bury each sack in a different state.

Your data is secure.

If that is too much work, then what Corky said is right on the ball.

I don't think it's good enough to bury the material. To be extra sure I'd recommend dumping the contents of the sacks in the ocean (in different locations of course).

 

[billyb0b]

DBAN will do the job just fine

depending on the HD size, the rotation speed, and the wipe method you could look at many many hours.

i recently wiped a 2TB 3.5" samsung spinning at 5400rpm. it took 73 hours to do a DoD 5220.22-M wipe (7 pass)

i ran it on a small low power pc in the kitchen that could afford to be taken offline for that long to wipe. it took forever but dban securely wiped it

 

[serpretetsky]

in order to actually erase the data you must overwrite the entire drive with a single pass or more of random data (single pass is sufficient). You can use the DBAN tool someone mentioned earlier or if you have a linux distro you use
http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_wipe_a_hard_drive_clean_in_Linux
using the random data example.

The US government wipes a drive 7 times, but i have never seen a case of recovery from a even a single random wipe.

 

[NickelPlate]

The oft recommended and free ccleaner has a built in drive wiper utility which I've used before giving old hard drives away. You can configure from 1 to 35 passes.

 

[stevech]

Yeah, lots of free disk wipers, good enough. Drive vendors have free tools too, like WD and Seagate.