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Hard drive cleaning
 

I am about to list my old laptop as Im upgrading, I want to clean hard drive first, anyone know the best disk bleacher or overwriter, that I can download free.

I use privacy guardian sometimes to free up space, but Ive no idea if it works or if its good, anyone know??

Try "Clear My History", You can get a 30 Day Free Trial.

The best way is to throw AWAY the laptop, if your really paranoid...:peace:

Speaking of recovering data, I just lost about 15 ebay accounts on win notepad, they're not in documents, not in recent history since I cleared cookies even tried system restore and that didn't work, just wasted a couple hours of work for nothing, so if you keep most of your data on notepad it's not going to take much to delete it, although I haven't checked the registry yet.

Ouch I got mines on excel I should make some backups

Luckily these weren't the ones with vcc's or phone #'s attached.

Ah yeah lucked out, wonder whats the best way to have backups, sounds pretty tedious task to do considering the lists get updated daily.

Jbluntz, There's programs out there that can get info back even after permanently deleting it. I don't know any off the top of my head, but you should be able to find some if you search on Google.

oompaloompa, If the computer ever had personal info on it, I would either destroy the hard drive and sell it without it. OR Find some software that is capable of deleting more then 1-pass, 7-pass would be pretty good, and unlikely to be able to be recovered.

@123 I've got a flash drive just keep forgetting to use it.

@lakeman, Yeah I know just couldn't find any for notepad.

Did you save it? Or was it deleted out of notepad before you saved it?

I was on another user and I saved it then went back to my main user where I had same notepad open and accidently saved it again which brought it back to where it was before I added the accounts on the other user.

That sucks, I don't know of anyway to get overwritten data back besides possibly system restore, but you said you tried that. :pout:

Same thing happened to me on windows 7. Files randomly started disappearing..I saw them for 1 minute then the other minute, there gone! I had to use a program called 'recover my files' to get them back. Even if you delete them, you can still get them back...

I downloaded evidence eliminator from brothersoft site

Free Evidence Eliminator Download

Drive scrubber is pretty good. Goes thru 7 layers of Gov't specs hard drive scrubbing. In any case, I always remove the hard drive when I get rid of an old computer, and save it. Never know when you may need that old data.

just before I use it this....seeing as I want to sell it, it doesnt get rid of anything important does it, affect the operating system or anti-virus or anything needed for resale right?

That's why from day one it all goes in a book. the one where you have to use a pen. Twice this method saved me from my 'magnetic field for electronic disasters' sickness I've equired from childhood.

You have to reinstall the O/S with the boot disk the mfr sent, or the one you burned when you got it new. The scrubber erases everything, even the operating system. Its pretty thorough. It will get rid of EVERYTHING!

Drive scrubber costs around 19.00 usd, you may be able to download it though.

Thas a good rule of thumb. Not a bad idea.

That's the way I used to do it, but would rather learn to be better friends with my flash drive, also I like windows notepad no page format and it's infinite in both directions.