What to do before sellling?

LazySausage

LazySausage

LazySausage

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Hi all,

Bit of a strange first post I know but I can’t get into my old account haha.

Anyway, I’m selling my gaming PC today and was just wondering what I need to do before the hand over? Obviously I’ll have to reset it but is there a preferred method? Will windows 10 still be on the system after reset or will I need to re instal that? And I’m guessing the new owner will need to reinstall all the up-to-date drivers again? Part of the deal was that it’s sold with windows 10 so either way it’ll have to be on there and I’ll activate it during hand over.

Any help much appreciated.
 
I guess it depends on what you have agreed to sell?

If I was selling a PC I'd be formatting/erasing the hard drive and then doing a full Windows install ready for the new owner - but that depends on whether you are including the Windows licence (sometimes it's tied to the hardware and sometimes not) in the sale!
 
StevieP said:
I guess it depends on what you have agreed to sell?

If I was selling a PC I'd be formatting/erasing the hard drive and then doing a full Windows install ready for the new owner - but that depends on whether you are including the Windows licence (sometimes it's tied to the hardware and sometimes not) in the sale!
Click to expand...

You’ll have to forgive my lack of knowledge, I’m rubbish with PC stuff (part of the reason for selling) so when your say formatting the hard drive, what exactly do you mean by that? Haha.

I managed to build it myself but that’s as far as my knowledge goes.
 
Ok, since I'm not convinced that resetting Windows leaves windows in the best state, I think it's better to clean install windows. However, you should really fully remove files on your disk (deleting them and putting them into the recycle bin isn't enough - if you have already done this then you should really to a complete format of your disk; the way I tend to do this is boot from a linux live disk and secure erase the disk but that takes a long time). Anyway, assuming that you haven't yet deleted your files, follow this guide

1) Download the latest installation media for Windows 10 and use it to create a bootable installation on a USB flash drive.
2) Follow this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icpf9K36fpA; the options you want to select are "Remove everything" and then "Remove files and clean drive"
3) Boot the installation media and do a clean installation of Windows 10

P.S. If you are running short of time, then just do part 2 (that said I'd do part 1 too because it's always good to have a Windows 10 install disk just in case).
 
Andrew Macgregor said:
Ok, since I'm not convinced that resetting Windows leaves windows in the best state, I think it's better to clean install windows. However, you should really fully remove files on your disk (deleting them and putting them into the recycle bin isn't enough - if you have already done this then you should really to a complete format of your disk; the way I tend to do this is boot from a linux live disk and secure erase the disk but that takes a long time). Anyway, assuming that you haven't yet deleted your files, follow this guide

1) Download the latest installation media for Windows 10 and use it to create a bootable installation on a USB flash drive.
2) Follow this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icpf9K36fpA; the options you want to select are "Remove everything" and then "Remove files and clean drive"
3) Boot the installation media and do a clean installation of Windows 10

P.S. If you are running short of time, then just do part 2 (that said I'd do part 1 too because it's always good to have a Windows 10 install disk just in case).
Click to expand...

Perfect, cheers mate.
 
Formatting and reinstalling
Does not mean any of your data can't be recovered
You need to boot and nuke mechanical drives
And run the secure erase command on ssds
If you think that's wrong run a data recovery software and you will absolutely find some of your old data if only format and install windows
 
Alternatively, if easier, you could install file encryption software (Bitlocker, Veracrypt, etc) onto your PC to fully encrypt all data on the drives then do the format and re-install windows if that's easier.
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
Formatting and reinstalling
Does not mean any of your data can't be recovered
You need to boot and nuke mechanical drives
And run the secure erase command on ssds
If you think that's wrong run a data recovery software and you will absolutely find some of your old data if only format and install windows
Click to expand...



I think you will enjoy this.... I did :D ( it's a interesting watch regarding what condition drives have to be in to not allow data recovery at all. ( long story short is blow them up ))
 
There may be a secure erase option in the BIOS although I have never used it as I tend to put my hard drives in my new system.
 
FloppyPoppy said:

I think you will enjoy this.... I did :D ( it's a interesting watch regarding what condition drives have to be in to not allow data recovery at all. ( long story short is blow them up ))
Click to expand...
Lol
That was a bit of fun
Usually if throwing out mechanical drives
I just drill a load of holes through the platters
 
I completely agree that formatting and reinstalling does not mean that data can't be recovered. In fact even after a full format (vs quick format), it's easy to recover data. On the note of formatting I've noticed an error in what I wrote... when I wrote "complete format", I meant "secure erase" which should be obvious from the context what I say afterwards.

Secure erase should be run on mechical disks. For SSD's, things get a bit more tricky. Even if you secure erase an SSD, that does not mean all of the storage on the disk has been securely erased and that is because when you buy an SSD e.g. 1TB, the disk actually gives you 1TB of space, but the actual capacity of the disk is higher than 1TB (i.e. the disk has capacity in reserve to give the disk a longer lifetime). Basically, there is an algorithm that runs on the disk, that swaps out heavy use areas of the drive with areas that are used less (including space in reserve) in order to maintain longevity of the disk (the idea being to spread usage over the entire capacity of the disk, so that no one part is used more). So when you secure erase, you are only erasing the portions of the disk that are currently visible to your OS, not the entirety of the disk. That means files that are currently in the reserve portion of the disk are potentially still in tact and could pop back into existance as visible to your OS at any time (I don't mean that they could suddenly reappear in your file system, but mean that if a recovery program is run, the files could potentially be easily recovered). So, the only way to ensure that data is not easily retrieveable from an SSD is to physically completely destroy the disk.

As a point of interested, for point 2) of my list when "Remove files and clean drive" is selected, Windows attempts to nuke the locations where the files are stored and I believe the remaining empty space too (I'm not sure about that latter part, but it would be stupid if it didn't) by applying its own secure erase algorithm. That said, because I haven't seen any test results to see how well it works, I don't trust it, which is why I tend to use a secure erase on linux. Assuming a mechanical disk, it is true that even that doesn't completely remove all trace, but you'd have to be really invested (with specialist equipment) to retreive any data from the disk after that has run for a few passes.
 
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With mechanical disks
Secure erase means overwriting the whole drive with 0
Multiple times which takes an awful long time
With ssds secure erase is done differently
Far as I understand it a voltage spike is sent to every cell
Did it to a Samsung ssd recently
Took only seconds
None of the recovery software I tried recovered anything whatsoever
 
Overwriting the whole drive with 0's is what happens as part of a genuine low level format at the factory. A user low level format as a concept does not guarantee the writing of 0's to every block, which is why when someone selects full format in Windows, data is still recoverable by recovery software.

If a genuine low level format is applied (where the data is zeroed), then data should not be recoverable via recovery software - for that, you would need specialist equipment.

With mechanical disks, although you could run a secure erase with 0's as a single pass, data will still be recoverable using specialist equiment. Therefore, secure erase should be understood as meaning multiple writes of every block of the disk, e.g. pass 1 might be random, pass 2 might be random, pass 3 might be 0's. If you want to go to the extreme that the industry considers secure then you would apply the Gutmann method (consisting of 35 passes).

With SSD's. What I said still applies unless your SSD supports secure erase (to be fair most do, but not all of them - e.g. SanDisk for example has it's own method using sanitize). To check if your SSD supports secure erase, you could boot from a Linux live disk and run hdparm -I against the device and check the output from the security section; if secure erase is suported it should say "supported: enhanced erase" and you can the be sure that the secure erase feature of hdparm should securely erase the disk.
 
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