Wiping a drive and selling a laptop

Okay I see that you want to sell with programs and such intact however if your that concerned about your drone attacks on flight 777 Why not just buy a cheap ass hard drive
? I bought my 120Gb ssd for less than $100. Install sw done deal. Run kill disk dod 7 passes plus verify on the old one the. Blow torch it.

 

This. Kick it off and let it run till it's done.

 

btw: the command is "clean all" You can get a description by doing "help clean" while in diskpart.

 

I'll check it out.. might come in handy someday. thanks

 

As someone noted earlier, single pass is generally effective against casual recovery. But unless you're in a rush, I always kick off 7 pass (so called "DoD wipes") before I go to bed - unless the disk is huge, they will usually be done by the time you're ready for coffee in the morning.

If you're really serious concerned about data remanence issues, degaussing or disintegration is the way to go. (Preferably both).

The latest NIST standard goes into more detail than you probably ever wanted to know:

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/drafts/800-88-rev1/sp800_88_r1_draft.pdf

 

So that they can unearth and read everything in what, five minutes?

I am just slightly suspicious of the NSA, for obvious reasons. Like some LEOs, they believe that they are above the law.

 

Appreciate all the input. I normally keep a laptop until it's dead, then destroy the HDD. Since I've migrated to the Apple bandwagon, this Dell has become excess baggage. I'll wipe with DBAN and reinstall OS. Thanks!