Have you ever sold a used computer?

[sc32803]

I've never sold a used computer before for a very dumb reason: as you can imagine by my being on this board, I have a ton of gay photos and videos on my drives. I know I can delete these and then sell the computer, and even though all of the images are of legal age men I'm paranoid that the new owner will still find something I left behind and freak out or complain. Dumb, huh?

Anyhow, have any of you ever sold a PC and if so, what did you do to make sure ALL of your personal stuff was totally removed from the drives?

[gaybucks_chip]

There are a bunch of ways to low-level format your drive so the data can't be recovered. Even deleting the partition table and reformatting won't keep someone who knows how to do so from recovering your data.

There are a bunch of products out there that will do this, including some free ones, but I absolutely love the products made by Runtime Software -- their "Get Data Back" has saved my ass and restored data from damaged drives more times than I care to count.

They did a blog post on this specific issue a while back. Their product is $69, but it does a bunch of other cool stuff as well as wiping drives. I'm sure that there are others who can suggest some of the free tools, I just don't know which ones are best, but I can vouch for Runtime's Drive Explorer

[nickbaer]

Get a really cheap HDD and swap it for your boot drive, then use your old drives in drive enclosures as external data sources on your new machine.

Or, go to Staples and get a 1T portable drive for $140 and keep your adult stuff in your pocket.

[sc32803]

Yes, I was going to do the external drive thing but I've already saved and deleted adult stuff on my boot drive so I don't want anyone to be able to dig that stuff back up.

And I didn't mention it originally but I also have non-adult sensitive info on my hard drive like bank account numbers, financial info, tax forms, etc. that although deleted, I don't want to take the chance that someone can still find the info.

[nickbaer]

Buy a new $75 HDD and put it in the computer with a fresh OS.

[sc32803]

Yes, I thought about doing either that or just selling it without a hard drive. That way someone else can experience all the fun of installing an OS.