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Dell Inspiron 1525 - Kill Hard Drive

Hi Experts,

I don't have the Dell restore disc and it didn't ship with it when i got it. But Is there a way to burn the restore from the hard drive? From the laptop i could restore it to factory setting. But, I want to completely kill the hard drive b4 selling it.

Any ideas?

TIA!

HamStab

They should be built in to the Hard Drive.

Ctrl + F11 at startup when you see the Dell screen.. also see http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19245630.aspx

Allan

ASKER

yes, the recovery is on it. However, I want to erase the hard drive b4 selling it, but I think it will erase the recovery as well.

I was thinking perhaps I could restore and use something like killdisk and hope that it will only erase the free space.

Any ideas?

MidnightOne

I'd recommend this method:
Do the system recovery.
Download Eraser (http://eraser.heidi.ie/download.php) and use it to DoD wipe the free space on the newly-recovered drive.

You'll have a base system to be sold without your data.

SOLUTION

HamStab

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blissbear

If what you wish to do is wipe the partition that your windows is installed on, but retain the restore partition, you can do the restore from the restore partition to recreate your initial windows install. Then use a freeware program like Eraser (http://eraser.heidi.ie/) to wipe the partition's free-space and little extra pieces on the blocks at the end of the files.

Allan

ASKER

MidnightOne - which version do you recommend and is it difficult to use?

blissbear: does yours sound like MidnightOne.

thanks HamStab.

Dorn, I need to do something as I'm about to sell this laptop in 60 min.

blissbear

Alternately, you can burn a copy of and boot from Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (http://www.ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm) and use Drive Eraser from the Security menu to wipe the windows partition completely, then do a restore from the restore partition.

blissbear

If you really aren't too concerned about the next person recovering deleted data from the drive, you can just do the system restore and your old data will appear to be gone. Most users arent savvy enough to recover deleted data.

blissbear

yeah, midnighone and i were typing the same solution at the same time. :D

Allan

ASKER

Thanks blissbear/MidnightOne.

Unable to finish the erase, so rescheduling the sales. Anyways, did the restore and downloaded Eraser, but how do you erase free space. With the Eraser program you can specifiy files/folders, but those are gone.

Any ideas.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

blissbear

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blissbear

Almost forgot to mention, you are probably going to want to go into Settings and set the method to psudorandom 1 pass, instead of the default 35 pass setting... unless you are dealing with someone who will dissassemble the drive and do advanced forensic research on the drive to recover data....

Allan

ASKER

it took awhile, but it completed w/error. need to look for err log.

Allan

ASKER

the log says " do not have the required permission to erase the file cluster tips". Is this important?

SOLUTION

MidnightOne

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Allan

ASKER

super!!! and have a Happy New Year!!!
i can sleep in peace ...