I would like to sell my old laptop but after reformatting all. I'm still worried that the new user is able to get back old the old data's. How to prevent this, without damaging the laptop.
22732
I am about to sell my old desktop PC and I am cautious about some of my sensitive information being available to the purchaser, even after reformatting the hard-drive, using data recovery software.  How can I securely wipe the hard drive so that the data on it cannot be recovered?  Although I specifically want help with my Windows PC, it wouldn't hurt if there were suggestions for Macs as well.
46980
Recently bought a new laptop with an extended warranty. Wondering if when a laptop needs to be sent in to the manufacturer for a repair (specifically a hardware repair),  is it ok to remove the hard drive when sending it in?  I don't want to risk my data (security) while in transit and out of my hands.  Nor do I want to delete sensitive files and restore them when my laptop is restored.  I guess this would make it tougher to troubleshoot issues and repair the laptop. I don't know what else I could do.
113445
I know that a fresh Ubuntu install can wipe Windows files completely.   But I've heard that Windows writes random hidden data everywhere without your permission. Can there be remains of Windows after a clean install of Ubuntu that can be potentially used by malicious software against your data or passwords?  I had a nasty malware attack recently and left Windows for good, but the software service installed Windows again. So will a fresh Ubuntu install by me over Windows wipe it for good?
36847
I lent my hard drive to a friend and he has formatted it as he couldn't get his PC to recognise it. I have no Time Machine backUp. Is there any way of recovering this data?
9141
I've recently destroyed my old laptop... but I've saved the ssd. Inside there was a SSD with Ubuntu 19.04 on it and the disk is encrypted.  I've bought a new laptop, and added my old SSD on top of the one already inside the new laptop.  On the new SSD I have Ubuntu 19.10, and from there I can access the data of my old SSD but I was wondering if there was a way to make the old SSD bootable ? Maybe creating a MBR or something like that ?  In the BIOS/UEFI I can see the old SSD in the SATA disks, but it's not in the bootable options, and I've activated the PXE Legacy.  Thanks in advance
77748
I have a really old Windows XP computer with data still intact in its two hard disk drives. Due to stability issues with the motherboard hardware, this computer hasn't been able to boot up stably, but its data is safe and intact.  I have decided to throw away all the hardware as e-waste, except the hard disk drives, which I have kept in electrostatic protective bags. I am planning to retrieve the data from there using a HDD docking station such as this  but need some advice before proceeding.   Currently, my new computer is running Ubuntu 16.04. My understanding is just by attaching the old hard disks to the HDD dock, and plugging in that dock into my new Ubuntu computer, I will be able to access all data in the old hard disks as if they were external USB storage devices.   If my Windows XP machine had a login password, would this prevent me from accessing the data?  How would my Ubuntu OS work to perform the mounting of the hard disks onto its file system? Do I need to perform additional steps or run some software that can allow me to access the data? Would there be any incompability issues arising from the hard disks being Windows OS, but my computer being Linux?   Thank you.
71075
If you are root, and you issue   rm -rf /    Then how far can the command go? Can you recover data from this kind of an action? Even after the binaries are gone, would the running processes still be active? What would it take to make the same physical machine boot again? What files would you need to restore to make this happen?  I could try this on a VM and see, but I want to know the rationale behind what to expect if I do this.
118046
I have a Dell D630 laptop that has Windows 7 Professional on it that was in dire need for replacement so I recently picked up an HP G62 laptop that comes with Windows 7 Home Premium. I don't need both laptops and I'd rather spare myself the time reinstalling all my programs and making sure I didn't forget to migrate any of my data over by simply swapping hard drives from the Dell to the HP.  Well, I tried just that and my HP laptop instantly BSOD'd on startup.  I'm currently running 'Startup Repair' but it's been sitting there for over 20 mins saying &quot;Attempting repairs...&quot; and nothing is really happening so I don't have much faith in this. The good news is that before I swapped the drives I made an Acronis image of the Dell drive and stored it on my NAS so I can pretty much try anything with this drive and still get back to where I was if need be. I find it hard to believe that what I want to do would be rather difficult, although it sure is looking that way.  I'd appreciate any advice in making this happen. Thanks Edit All the answers were great, so thank you.  I accepted djechelon's answer because the Win7 migration tool saved me quite a bit of time.
77775
I heard that doing too many Low Level formats can damage the hard drive. But it make things really fast and remove almost all the malware infections. So, my question is, how many times can we do the low level format safely without damaging the hard drive?
105784
How can I prevent data theft from a company?  Are there any solutions to this problem?  Is there any software that encrypts important data (.doc, .xls, etc.) and prevents it from copying?  I need a solution where employees can read/write documents but can not copy then to a USB drive or e-mail them.
33724
My laptop got broken (by what it seems the graphics card burned) and it is so old that it is not worth fixing it.   I took the harddrive from it and tried to use it as external hard drive with other computer, however I cannot access all the data, ie anything that is inside my user folder (it shows it to be empty). Couldn't find anything to solve it.
108987
I cut and paste an 80GB worth of files and folders. At about 80% I cancelled it. Are some of the files deleted and gone forever? Does the files that were successfully transferred gets deleted? If yes, can I still recover them?
19146
Is there a way to make sure that a deleted file can not be recovered?   As you know, deleting a file by pressing shift-del or using trash doesn't mean that file is gone forever. It resides somewhere in the computer.  In day to day life, law enforcement or thieves use recovery programs to reveal our private data or something else.   They can recover all data that resides on hard disk, in RAM, and even USB.  To protect us from these people, what should one do? Which program should one use?  Note: I don't want an answer like first use a recovery program then erase that file with shred. With just one program, I want to erase all unused/deleted files on my computer.
41657
This morning I went to turn on a family member's laptop to find the SMART message displaying that the laptop's hard disk is close to failure and needs replacing.   The laptop is around 2 years old now and I have now backed everything up just in case of this 'imminent' failure.   I ran the HDTune programme to test the amount of damaged blocks there are in the hard disk.  This resulted in 24/2500 blocks (1%)  To me, (someone who doesn't know a great deal about computer hardware) this doesn't seem like a very large amount and I am not entirely sure where to go from here.   Shall I just suggest to immediately buy a new hard drive for the laptop as this one will just keep on deteriorating?  Or, as everything is now backed up, keep on using the laptop until the inevitable happens which could be; days, weeks or months, as this laptop isn't really used for anything majorly important?  Thanks in advance,  JD
54088
I have just dropped a half full latté on my company laptop and am not sure what to do.  Is there a way I can make sure that my laptop is usable again?  What steps must I go through to improve it's chances of survival?
96714
A few days ago I did some summer cleaning on my computer, moving a bunch of old files to an external Flash drive for backup and then deleting them from the computer. To make sure that no one could recover my old photos or videos, I used this program called Eraser to wipe the free space after I moved the files. I used the Guttman method (35 passes) to wipe the free space on my hard drive.   Is there any way someone could recover this data even after I wiped it with 35 passes? Let's say I sold my hard drive on Amazon and someone bought it. Would they be able to do it?
36396
Some kinda voodoo, indeed.  Bought a new boot drive, and it's time to use the old drive for data. I thought I'd save some time by just wiping the unneeded system folders, instead of backing up, formatting, and restoring. Wups!  I have a single Adobe file that absolutely will not be deleted. G:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\flash9.ocx - though it may have started with a different file name. I'm able to rename it, oddly enough.  To be clear, the drive is currently plugged in externally. So I can boot the computer, plug this drive in afterward, and immediately attempt to delete. "File in use" box reads "the action can't be completed because the file is open in another program".  I'd format at this point, but it's my white whale, and I have to know if Adobe has inserted some nasty little registry hack - or whatever it is - making this impossible.  Since I'm sure it'll come up, I've taken ownership of the file - and this was the trick preventing me from deleting anything else on the drive - full rights on the file permissions, you name it, I've fiddled with the file itself.   I'm about to try uninstalling flash from the system drive, in case that aligns the planets properly. Sometimes I wish I were less stubborn, and could just format already.