revtothelimit - motorbike forum

Going to donate a computer to a friend for her kids for school remote access.

Apart from copying off 'my documents', what else to do (to clear passwords etc)?

Either you are happy to share everything that has ever been on that computer or you replace the hard drive.

There is no middle ground.

DEADPOOL wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 9:44 am Either you are happy to share everything that has ever been on that computer or you replace the hard drive.

There is no middle ground.

Yes, I appreciate that a sledgehammer is the ultimate de/refrag.

However, it's relatively unlikely that the person it's going to will be undertaking nefarious deeds, and I can ask for it to be returned should they no longer need it.

And thank you for bumping the thread

Format hd and reinstall winoze/linux.

ogri wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 10:24 am Format hd and reinstall winoze/linux.

From memory, it came with Windows on a partition. But that really is a dragging from the depths memory ...

It does not need to be nefarious. No doubt you will have installed a few programs which are either registered/unregistered. There are plenty of other user specific settings that all machines pick up over the years.

Like I said, either you are happy to share your information or you're not. The idea that a child is not going to pick apart or deep dive a hard drive is something only older folk are likely to believe.

At the very least reinstall windows to factory settings and then redo all the updates.
It is still possible for the recipient to scrape deleted files from the hard drive, I don't think there's an option in the reinstall process to properly wipe the hard drive (even then it is still possible to recover data from spinning disks but it's expensive government type stuff).

DEADPOOL wrote: Thu Jan 07, 2021 12:23 pm Like I said, either you are happy to share your information or you're not. The idea that a child is not going to pick apart or deep dive a hard drive is something only older folk are likely to believe.

It's a bit like some advice I heard years ago, to never say on the phone anything that you wouldn't shout in the street.

As you say, what's sensible to believe?

I'd use something like DBAN, it overwrites the disc multiple times. Once that's done, twice if you are paranoid, then reinstall the operating system.

AIUI it's approved by medical bodies and the military to securely wipe hard drives. There's a theoretical possibility of retrieving some info if one has access to a tunnelling electron microscope.