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How to secure a used HP laptop for sale (erasing files, security, etc)?

i posted an item a little while ago re: Consumer reports thoughts on identity safety and the such in the realm of selling and disposing of PC's; how there was possibly a void in how securely folks take care of such matters when selling a laptop, e.g. I have a HP dv9500t- I'm selling it; will the restore disc (taking it back to out of box state) be sufficient? Anyone familiar w/ HP's that can lend a thought or two? Thnx

Public Comments

1. I used wipe drive pro (www.whitecanyone.com) to competely erase my hard drive in accordance with DOD (departement of defense) procedure. it overwrites your hard drive 3 times and then I restored (with the mfg restore disks) the operating system. It took me about 5hrs+ but it was totally worth knowing I was protecting myself I also know that this company will sell your used laptop as well (I talked to them, they charge a fee to sell it but they do all that stuff for you) http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=it-bysmart
2. read this : http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Computer_Science/2007/completely_erase_harddrive.asp first of all, you need hard disk zero writers to completely empty out your hard drive and then reinstall the system and then what you need to do is to install some popular softwares if you got them to make your deal more impressive
3. You need to understand that when you Format a hard drive, or when you delete a file, all that happens is that you identify that data or all the data in the case of a format, that it is okay to write data over any or all of those files. The Format and Delete commands only remove a small line of code that lets the hard drive find a file or program. THEY DO NOT PHYSICALLY REMOVE THE DATA FROM YOUR HARD DRIVE. You need a program that will over write the data on the disk with 1's and 0's in accordance with the FB I or Military specifications. In this manner, it renders any/all data that was on the hard drive totally erased and nothing of your "history" will remain there. Once you have that done, you can reinstall Windows XP (or whatever) and sell your PC. I use Killdisk and you can get it FREE at http://www.download.com Hope this helps.