Thought I could just re format hard drive to wipe everything before sale. But Format option via right click at C: drive doesn't permit that.
Cannot find Disk Management Utility anywhere in the PC - that would permit option to clean disk but still keep operating system.
What other suggestions to wipe hard drive and/or to keep O/S during that process. Is there some sotfware I could download to manage the process?
Thanks for any help.

mariner26 - 2021-04-26 11:15:00

mariner26 wrote:

Thought I could just re format hard drive to wipe everything before sale. But Format option via right click at C: drive doesn't permit that.

Hahah no. Format WIPES the hard drive. It can't wipe itself. And it's not going to have any operating system on it if you do that, which would reduce the value of the beast by a lot.

mariner26 wrote:

Cannot find Disk Management Utility anywhere in the PC - that would permit option to clean disk but still keep operating system.
What other suggestions to wipe hard drive and/or to keep O/S during that process. Is there some sotfware I could download to manage the process?
Thanks for any help.

Just go into control panel. Make a new user. Log off the current user, and then log in as the new user and delete the old user, (it'll ask if you want to save the files say NO). Then you can run something like Ccleaner/tools/ drive wiper, (choose 'free space only'). Afterwards. It's about as good as you can get without messing around wiping the disk entirely and then re-installing the operating system.

nice_lady - 2021-04-26 11:36:00

Thanks Julie. Shall try that.

mariner26 - 2021-04-26 11:48:00

What make and model computer is it. Many have an option to do a factory reset which would be ideal for your purposes. Note that it is still possible to recover some of the old files even though they are not showing so it would still pay to use a drive wiper if you have any sensitive information on it

duncb - 2021-04-26 14:33:00

duncb wrote:

What make and model computer is it. Many have an option to do a factory reset which would be ideal for your purposes. Note that it is still possible to recover some of the old files even though they are not showing so it would still pay to use a drive wiper if you have any sensitive information on it

The "wipe clear space" on Ccleaner is effective.
I did a cross reference test with a data recovery app & there was nothing to recover from the empty part of the hdd.
Between that & a fresh install from the recovery partition, should be enough to put off any casual recovery efforts

mrfxit - 2021-04-26 17:59:00

Depends on the model, A factory rest is the one. Otherwise Nice_Lady has the go as well

swivel - 2021-04-26 20:29:00

May not be of much use, but I have all data on partition Drive F and the operating system and programmes on Drive C. Makes back ups of all data far simpler.

Also easier to wipe all data, if required, but I usually remove the hard drives and just dismantle and scrap (via recycling), the rest of the PC's anyway.

socram - 2021-04-29 21:23:00