Wiping a HDD

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Roaraxe565

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Mar 22, 2014
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I am currently in the process of selling my laptop. I want to clear the HDD so that there is no sensitive information on it when I sell it, however I want to keep the Microsoft Office that was pre-installed on it as well as the OS. is there a way I can accomplish this? I still have the original Discs that came with it
-Drivers and Utilities
-Adobe Premier Elements 9
-Adobe Photoshop Elements
I also have the card that has the Product Key for the Microsoft Home and Office (which is already installed but want to keep). I don't have a cd for the OS and would also like to keep that (I believe that it came pre installed when i ordered it form Dell).

Model: Dell Inspiron 15R Inspiron 7520
Processor: Intel i7-3612QM @ 2.1 GHz
RAM: 8GB
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
GPU: AMD Radeon Catalyst Control w/
AMD Radeon HD 7730M/Intel HD Graphics 4000
Display: 1920x1080
Ports: USB 3.0x3, VGA, HDMI, Headphone jack, Microphone jack, Ethernet port,
Disk Drive: DVD/Blue Ray

Bottom line I want to keep the OS (Windows 7) and Microsoft Office while still wiping my HD of sensitive information.

Thanks
 
Solution
USAFRet
The only way to be sure is to wipe the drive,, and reinstall all the stuff.

If all that was preinstalled, you should be able to either create a set of factory reinstall disks, or contact Dell who will sell you a set for a small sum.

Wiping and starting over is the only way to be sure.
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InvalidError

InvalidError

Titan
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May 18, 2007
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If you do not want to re-install Windows on a freshly full-formatted HDD, your next best option is to make sure all your important files have been removed from the HDD, fill the HDD with trivial stuff or garbage to overwrite all unused space and then delete those filler files.

This does you no good if you are worried about leftover records in the registry or any other random place applications might store extra stuff but if all you care about is your own flies' contents, then wiping free space should make most of it unrecoverable by DIYers.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

Titan
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Mar 16, 2013
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The only way to be sure is to wipe the drive,, and reinstall all the stuff.

If all that was preinstalled, you should be able to either create a set of factory reinstall disks, or contact Dell who will sell you a set for a small sum.

Wiping and starting over is the only way to be sure.
 
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Solution
S

sewalk

Distinguished
Sep 21, 2010
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18,860
Most systems sold within the last few years have a small partition on the hard drive that contains most of what is needed to do a full restoration of the software that was on the system when you bought it. It is usually accessible through the boot menu or by running a utility from within Windows. Selecting this option should reformat the hard drive, making any data on the drive inaccessible by anything short of a computer forensics lab or data recovery service. You could also run a utility that rewrites null data to the system partition but be careful not to run such a utility on the whole drive because you will destroy the recovery partition, too.

Check the documentation that came with your system or is available on Dell's web site for the particulars.
 
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