techsupport

2455 readers

5 users here now

The Lemmy community will help you with your tech problems and questions about anything here. Do not be shy, we will try to help you.

If something works or if you find a solution to your problem let us know it will be greatly apreciated.

Rules: instance rules + stay on topic

Partnered communities:

You Should Know

Software gore

Recommendations

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

GatoB@lemmy.world

How to delete everything but OS securely? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by ShunkW@lemmy.world to c/techsupport@lemmy.world

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm looking to sell my laptop. I've used stuff like DBAN before but that nukes the whole drive obviously. Is there any good way to leave the OS intact after a reset but also make sure that there's no recoverable data?

Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

Edit to add: I don't have the product key for the pre installed Windows 10 OS. Maybe there's a way to recover that and reinstall after a full wipe?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] DickFiasco@lemm.ee 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's no way to know if Windows stored some personal data in an OS directory somewhere, so nuking the whole disk is the only way to be safe. If this is an SSD drive, then wiping should be done with secure erase, not by overwriting like you'd do with a magnetic HDD.

[–] ShunkW@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I didn't know about this feature. Looks like I should be able to do this with the Dell UEFI secure erase. Now to get a USB-A to USB-C adapter since that's all the laptop has so I can reinstall the OS after.