Cleaning the laptop before selling and paranoia

Question

laptops

It is necessary to sell the laptop, but at the same time it is necessary to clean it well without demolishing the OS - by default it was Vista, then a long hassle with installing specific drivers (well, like 30 of them, I made a mistake in the order - start installing the Axis from the beginning - Sony Vaio Z '09 ) Windows 7 was installed - there is no desire to repeat this process again.

So, if I erase all personal information using Windows Explorer, and then go through the destruction of empty space using CCleaner'a (for example, with a triple overwrite) - will this provide an acceptable level of reliability?

CCleaner is still cake in these matters, can it be trusted? Or is it better to use more specific software?

PS Notebook with Windows 7 Ultimate, hard drive - not SSD

Answer 1

1) www.dban.org to clean everything up
2) Install Ubuntu and let the new owner deal with everything else,
or
2) Install Vista + a set of original drivers (available on the site), and let the new owner deal with the seven
Free space is cleaned by many programs ( and even with a guarantee), but in Windows information settles in so many places ...
By the way, selling a computer with a seven, you most likely become a pirate. Or will you also transfer the license?

Answer 2

To clean up empty space, I advise sdelete / z or cipher / w.
As for personal information, I advise you to think again. The number of places in the system where certain traces remain is in the tens. And with each version of Win, this number increases. :)
Another tip is to remove the image before cleaning and save it for a while. Well, since there is paranoia here - after stripping before selling, one more image.

Answer 3

Paranoia is a tough thing. In my opinion, it’s better to demolish everything, rewrite it 3-4 times (although it is claimed that on modern HDDs it is already impossible to restore the information after one rewrite cycle) and reinstall, being sure that everything has been erased. It is better to spend a day installing firewood than to be afraid for a week (month? year?) That private info will be with the enemies. Mental health comes first, right? :)

Answer 4

Before selling a computer (Windows), I do this:
1. I create a new administrative account
2. I nail all other accounts (including the physical erasure of the data of these accounts on the disk)
3. I delete all programs and files / directories that are unnecessary in terms of selling (that is, all , which is not system and not Program files)
4. I clean the temps
5. Move all the remaining data to the beginning of partition-a (all sorts of Partition Magic will help)
6. A separate partition is created in the free space and encrypted with TrueCrypt. We get two sections: one - with a system and a minimum of data, the second - encrypted.
7. We go through ccleaner on the first partition and fill in the free space with zeros
8. Remove the encrypted partition and unite the free space with the first partition.
Unless you are a Guatemalan intelligence agent or a licensed distributor of child pornography, these steps should suffice. If there is information on the disk that under no circumstances should fall into the wrong hands (for example, pirated copies of The Innocence of Muslims), then you need to change the disk.

Answer 5

mhdd erase command

Answer 6

Data and operating system stored on different partitions? And then I booted from a Linux live-cd, dd-shuffled the partition, recreated it - and then let them try to restore something ...

Answer 7

I once cleaned a flash drive well using the Free Space Destruction utility from the AusLogic Bootspeed package.
The process is long, but after it, the recovery programs did not see anything on the flash drive, except for unrecoverable file stubs. And that is not enough.

Answer 8

boot from LiveCD and clean it with your hands, СCLeaner, Blank and Secure (http://softwareok.com/?Microsoft/BlankAndSecure)