cnkp21

I am not planning to do it for another month or so until my wife finishes Uni and I can commandeer her newer laptop, but I will definately post my results. I have returned it to factory settings before and it was an easy process so I am not anticipating any issues. Thanks again

Cheers ISO- Later I think I will go with that and using Recuva to check for any left over data is an excellent idea. I didn't even think of that. Thank you for all your help guys. Regards Chris

Andavari - Thank you for your message. If you were in my situation would you be happy to just carry out the procedure that I have described? I am not a massively paranoid person so if it would be extremely difficult to recover my data following the use of Ccleaner then I would be satisfied.

mta - I am no expert and although computers are becoming more complicated every day, I am generally ok to a certain degree. I have used the factory reset on this laptop and other laptops in the past so I will have no trouble doing that or backing up data. I have not replaced a hard drive but have removed one from another laptop. Generally if I dont know how to do something, a quick google search and I am usually sorted. On this occasion it is proving more difficult. As stated I do not have windows restore CD or any other recovery CD's and the windows licence key bar code has rubbed off the bottom of my laptop. Although I am generally ok with computers I am concerned that if I fully wipe the hard drive I may struggle to restore it back to original. I have read online that if you use Dban Nuke and Destroy then it will wipe the entire hard drive including any recovery partitions, therefore it probably would be best to restore to factory setting and then download Ccleaner and wipe the free space. This may be a ridiculous question but if I restore to factory settings, is the free hard drive space the only place that my data can be restored from? I do not feel that my data is that sensitive apart from financial information and if I can restore to factory settings and run Ccleaner, so that my data is more or less impossible to recover without the use of sophisticated and expensive recovery software, then I am sure that would be sufficient. ISO-later - If I press F8 during start up then it brings an option to repair the computer and then to restore to factory settings. I will look forward to hearing from you both. Cheers Chris

Guys, I appreciate your assistance. My data will be limited to website passwords, bank information, national insurance numbers, addresses, personal information etc from general Internet usage only. Obviously this is sensitive to myself but from what you both describe, returning the computer to factory default and using Ccleaner disk wipe will be more that sufficient. Would you recommend that I carry out the disk wipe first then the factory reset or vice versa. Many thanks Chris

Hi I am hoping to sell my laptop in the near future and want to ensure the hard drive is completely clean of all sensitive data and can not be recovered. There is conflicting and ambiguous information on the internet so I am a little confused. Would it be sufficient with no risks of my previous data being recovered to delete all user profiles, use the CC Cleaner Disk Wipe utility and then return the laptop back to factory setting. My laptop is a Windows 7 Acer Aspire 5741Z and I can not find the windows recovery CD's. I will appreciate people's assistance. Many thanks Chris