Destroy Data, keep XP?

[BreatGritain]

Good evening,

 

I'm soon getting rid of my old XP netbook due to an upgrade. I'll be selling it on eBay no doubt.

 

I'm wondering how I would go about destroying my personal information from the laptop, whilst keeping XP intact?

 

Windows was pre-loaded on the machine at time of purchase and as the netbook has no DVD drive I have no physical copies that I can re-install at a later date, but I want to make sure that my personal banking details and choices of Adult Entertainment Websites are kept private...

 

Any suggestions?

[RandyL]

If you previously deleted files then emptied the bin the files are actually still there but renamed. Eventually that area will be rewritten. There are many data recovery programs that may find them. Even after a reinstall some data recovery programs will still find some files.

 

When I delete temp files or sensitive files I don't use the recycle bin. I use a program that shreds them many times over. Many of these programs will even overwrite the area after.

 

A reinstall will keep all but the most persistent from reclaiming anything. There are also programs that will completely wipe the drive.

 

For future reference look at something like CCleaner to delete files, temp files, history, cookies etc. You can set it to make up to 35 passes when shredding. 7 passes will be much faster.

 

There are others of course.

[KenB]

Does your hard drive have a recovery partition on it ?

[BreatGritain]

Thanks for your reply RandyL,

 

And Ken, yesit has a recovery partition.

 

There are files which will have already been deleted that Im worried could be recovered in the future after I reinstall xp.

[KenB]

You need something like DBAN.

click here

This will absolutely clear EVERYTHING off the drive so that it cannot possibly be recovered.

It wipes even the formatting and leaves the drive as it was beforehand.

If you are going to rely on the recovery partition to re-install then you may lose this if you use this or similar software.

 

I am not sure if it is possible to nuke just C: drive and leave the recovery partition.

[Armageddon]

Hi sorry to butt in DBAN is pretty good but has no options it will just wipe everything including the recovery partition , another peice of free software allows you to wipe the C:/ and leave the recovery partition in place is can be downloaded from here

[KenB]

Hi sorry to butt in DBAN is pretty good but has no options it will just wipe everything including the recovery partition

Thanks Armageddon - I wasn't sure if it had progressed any.