What should I do before selling my HDD and desktop?

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by Fly3, Mar 27, 2019.

  1. Fly3

    Fly3 MDL Junior Member

    Oct 7, 2017
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    #1 Fly3, Mar 27, 2019
    Its my first time selling my hardware so I have no idea about the best method for wiping data from the HDD and also make it unrecoverable. its not that critical but I really don't like that feeling.
    also one of my HDDs is too slow and I think its failing.
    And if there any thing to do for the other hardware parts before selling ?
     
  2. MrMagic

    MrMagic MDL Guru

    Feb 13, 2012
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    #2 MrMagic, Mar 27, 2019
    Remove the drives, job done
     
  3. RanCorX2

    RanCorX2 MDL Addicted

    Jul 19, 2009
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    #3 RanCorX2, Mar 27, 2019
    just format the one that you want to sell, unless you are a spy, you have nothing to worry about.

    for the failing one, you could always drill a hole through it.
     
  4. Krager

    Krager MDL Senior Member

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    #4 Krager, Mar 27, 2019
    Before I sell or discard a drive I always write zeros to the entire drive. It can be done with diskpart by issuing the "clean all" command. Care is needed using that utility with multiple drives since it can be easy to wipe the wrong drive. Make sure the correct drive is selected. It does take a while so best to start it and come back to it after an hour or two. It's possible to boot into WinPE off USB to do it with a single drive in the system, but I normally just plug the drive into another computer to wipe it.

    Alternately a Linux boot USB can be used to issue the disk to disk copy command "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/<drive> bs=64k". The <drive> would be something like sda or sdb depending on the system. The "bs=64k" is optional but using a bigger block size speeds up the process a good amount. Again risky command if issued incorrectly with other drives on the system.
     
  5. Joe C

    Joe C MDL Guru

    Jan 12, 2012
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    #5 Joe C, Mar 27, 2019
    Your safest bet is to just sell it without your hard drive(s). If you think you can get a better price with a drive than get a cheap SSD for it and install Windows
     
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  6. maddogster

    maddogster MDL Member

    Mar 23, 2015
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    #6 maddogster, Mar 27, 2019
  7. MS_User

    MS_User MDL Guru

    Nov 30, 2014
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    #7 MS_User, Mar 27, 2019
  8. kumaramy

    kumaramy MDL Member

    Feb 16, 2013
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    #8 kumaramy, Mar 29, 2019
    If the data is so sensitive then don't sell it. Plus you aren't really going to earn too much from the sell. Even new Hard drives these days are so cheap and affordable. So just break it or if you are really emotionally attached to the hard drive then dig Giant hole in the basement and dump it there and never tell anyone about it.
     
  9. petok

    petok MDL Senior Member

    May 4, 2009
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    #9 petok, Apr 7, 2019
    When I sell my pc I remove my old hdd and change hdd with cheap ssd model 120 GB and then sell. Old disk I again use... When disk die then destroy complete see up post from @MS_User