Secure wipe Windows 8 from Asus laptop

sswats

sswats

sswats

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26 Mar 2004
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Selling a laptop on and want to wipe the hard drive securely.

But i want to sell it with its original recovery partition intact.
There is not make a recovery DVD option in Windows for some reason.

What do I do?
 
Why is wiping just the partition more risky?

I've wiped just a partition before using partition wizard which has a multi stage data wipe
 
sswats said:
Why is wiping just the partition more risky?

I've wiped just a partition before using partition wizard which has a multi stage data wipe
Click to expand...

It's more risky as when you're not paying attention, disk and partition seem worryingly similar :p

If you've done it before, what's the issue?
 
Boot W8 setup/recovery and do a full format, it will zero that partition. Not sure if setup will have that option, if not recovery and the commandline will do you.
 
I've done it before but have had a 50% success rate in keeping the restore. But I could always just boot windows 7 off a CD and reinstall using the key on the base. This windows 8 doesn't have a key, and I've been told that it should pick up the license automatically but don't want to risk it.

Restore process is not enough, Is Zero out sufficent. I was planning on doing a 3 stage pass.

I may just do the clonezilla method then as a backup if it goes wrong then do partition wipe.
 
question. when using the recovery feature, if the hdd is a sdd does the Windows 8 Secure wipe send the secure wipe command or does a Secure wipe like on a normal hdd (which isn't good for ssd's)?
 
sswats said:
I've done it before but have had a 50% success rate in keeping the restore. But I could always just boot windows 7 off a CD and reinstall using the key on the base. This windows 8 doesn't have a key, and I've been told that it should pick up the license automatically but don't want to risk it.

Restore process is not enough, Is Zero out sufficent. I was planning on doing a 3 stage pass.

I may just do the clonezilla method then as a backup if it goes wrong then do partition wipe.
Click to expand...

Yes, write over something once and recovery is just impossible (ignore anyone who says otherwise). With a Hybrid drive or SSD you'll need to use the SecureErase command and hope it's properly supported by controller/drive - also that would do the whole drive not just one partition.
 
sswats said:
Thats a good point. This is a hybrid hard drive. How does that work in terms of wiping securely and safely?
Click to expand...

In that case you will need to clone the recovery partiton, wipe, and then restore it.

The flash part of the drive uses wear-levelling, etc so not every part of the SSD's storage is presented to the OS, the firmware changes things around behind the scenes. So a conventional overwrite won't get every block as they're not all seen by the software.

However, there is a command in the ATA standard called SecureErase. Using this will tell an SSD to wipe everything, which is done in moments, and on a HDD it will overwrite everything (and take a while). A few tools support it through hdderase or hdparm now so you could make a PartedMagic, GParted or other Linux livecd and use that and figure out the commands or option locations with a Google.
One caveat, not all SATA controllers and controllers on the disk implement this properly. I don't know the state of play now but I would think that a hybrid drive and modern SATA controller will be okay.
 
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