Need Input

L

Lugztaz

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 21, 2004
Messages
1,783
I have a stack of Gateway desktops that I need to sell. There is a recovery partition on the harddrive and that makes formatting them SOOOOOO easy but I'm worried about the data being recovered by advanced programs.

I could completely wipe the HDD with advanced programs but I really want to keep that recovery partition, what can I do?
 
I would back up the recovery partition, wipe the entire disk with dban, then restore the recovery partition. This is more steps, but it's simpler than trying to decide if you've wiped the right thing or not.

Also, I'd make copies of two recovery partitions and see if they're the same. If they are, you don't need to back up each machine's recovery partition individually.
 
You could use a program like Partition Magic or even freeware like Maxblast to copy the recovery partition onto another drive (USB external or perhaps take the laptop drives out and use an adapter to put them into a desktop for the task). Then wipe the drive and copy the partition back.

But it would probably be enough to just complete the recovery install on the laptops, then use a program to wipe the free space. Any data recovery would likely come from space on the drive that sat as empty or unused since the recovered data was previously stored there. Recovering data from space that has been specifically wiped or had other data written on top will be significantly more difficult.
 
Awesome, I'll see what I can figure out.
I guess the one question I have is, right now before boot it says to press F11 to go into recovery mode. Is this a part of the BIOS/Startup or will I loose this once I format and put the recovery partition back?
 
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