How do you reformat your hardware so when I sell my computer, no one can view personal info?

Question

Or is there another proccess?

Answer 1

There are programs that erase every single details from any memory , if you're selling or giving it to normal ppl don't worry they 'll never find your info after the regular formatting cause only the good hackers can get any information deleted from any memory

Answer 2

If you're going to sell or donate a machine, then reformatting or restoring are not the answers. Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, made it so the My Documents folder is not harmed during a restore and formatting does not wipe out the data. The only way to be certain is to use a third party product like Wipe Drive that will write over the data on your machine with random characters so nothing of yours can ever be read. Their are other products available to perform this task, but I have personal experience with this one and it works very well.

Answer 3

If you truly want to stop anyone from viewing any information on your hard drive, you will need to fill it with garbage and then reformat it about 7 or 8 times.

The technology is available so that people can still get data off a hard drive until about 7 times after it has been overwritten.

Answer 4

If your computer CAME with a RESTORE disk, then use that and PICK the FORMAT option. This will also restore all of the software that CAME with your computer, so what you are selling is worth the price.

Otherwise, try booting the computer from Floppy disk and using the FDISK command and deleting the hard drive's partition. Then CREATE a new partition, then using FORMAT.

But try to sell something that is useable. It's gonna be hard to sell if they can't see anything.

Good luck

Answer 5

People can still retrieve data on a hard drive even with a simple format. You need something that will actually write every sector of the hard drive.

I recommend using DBAN, its free and it supports the Department of Defense wiping algorithms.

Answer 6

if you re-format from a boot disk make sure you use the /u option
this will format in unconditional mode making it harder to restore any data from a format without the /u switch.
it will be slower so depending on the drive size start it and go watch the TV for a while

Answer 7

what you can do is do a system recovery if you are useing Windows XP and what you have to pay attention to is when you use the wizard make sure you go to advanced options and check destructive restore and click ok and follow the wizard as long as you have no data that is backed up you can erase everything and it will be working just like when it came from the factory.

Answer 8

If you have the Windows XP or 98 or any windows or linux setup disk then boot from that disk and format your hard drive completely.

If you need additional help then e-mail me at: [e-mail]

Answer 9

you need to install as a slave and format it at least 3 times.
Reason most people can restore data from a formated hard drive , but not if you full format 3 times

Answer 10

Hardware does not store any thing in it, you just do low level format your HDD, that's all, after that no one can access that info which was stored, remember that not a normal format,