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Re: Things to do prior to selling my PC?
Donââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t take what Zinglebarb said with a pinch of salt. He is absolutely correct. There is freeware available that will †œunformatà¢ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚¬Ã‚à  a hard disk in seconds. That is no deterrent to recovering data.
Even overwriting a disk will not prevent a determined person from retrieving your data. If your hard disk was to fall into the wrong hands and that person saw the characteristic patterns of an overwrite, it may tempt him to try and find what someone had gone to all the time and trouble to hide. (The overwrite is a fairly lengthy process). He would whack it in a spare machine, throw his software at it and in two or three days you would be surprised what may be recovered.
The chances of this are obviously very small but Zinglebarbââ ¬â„¢s advice still stands.
Alternatively, if there is data on your drive that you feel is very important and you donââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t fancy the lump hammer route, why not buy a small cheap hard drive to enable you to sell a complete PC and keep your original hard drive safe and sound. Then pop your original drive in a USB caddy and use it with your new laptop. Just a thought.
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