Security when Selling Acer Aspire One

Is there a safe way to sell the Acer Aspire One once its been used? I have data on here and I'm not wanting to buy an XP OS, by an external optical drive, & reinstall XP to wipe my data. Is there another restore method other than Windows Recovery in Accessories & manually deleting all of my data (which wouldn't be zeroed out anyway). (All of my past recovery saves have been deleted).

 

alt +f10 during post and use the erecovery to whipe your hdd and restore XP. Most people are newb anyways , they're mentally incapable of "undeleteing" things off your hdd.

 

You say "Post" are you talking about right when BIOS boots?

 

Yes, "Power On Self Test".

 

You can download a free application called Eraser which permits both file deletion and wiping free space on the drive (google.) I've been using it routinely (instead of simply deleting data) for years:

http://www.heidi.ie/node/6

 

I agree with jacklao above that statistics are on your side: chances of your hard drive falling into the hands of somebody with the ways, means, and desire to extract deleted data off it is virtually nil. A clean install back to the factory contents is sufficient.

 

Not wiping your drive? How much you selling it for? it would be a bargain for anyone looking to steal your info. Take the time, get the software to wipe it clean. The one I use is proprietary to where I work, so i can't offer anything specific for you... but the one I use has anything from single write, to MBR wipe, to DOD 7-time random write. Very good. And even if you have to pay $50 or $80 for a tool, it'll work for you for a long time and is very cheap insurance to prevent someone from getting your info.

 

And most people won't climb up a drainpipe and enter to steal your stuff through an open windows, either. Nor will most clone your credit card when they wait on you on a cafe terrace and take it inside to swipe for the cafe. It's not most people you have to be careful of. Try Eraser, as suggested and look for the DBAN method - online by itself at http://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/ as well as partially incorporated into Eraser. Wipe JUST the partition/s that your data is on because Acer is only an honest vendor in some regions. In the others, if you accidentally wipe the recovery partition they'll charge you a bundle to sell you back what you've already paid for.

 

And by the way, as this is about security and someone asked, presumably sincerely, so
should get a real answer, not rubbish: you'd only have to have done it once, observing
the process (or be a newb, masquerading as a nerd) to know - without even examining
a post-recovered drive - that the eRecovery process whipes (sic) practically nothing
except the few gigabytes that the recovered system and demo applications take up.
Anything else on the drive - which, if it's 160GB big, is a helluva lot - is left totally
untouched. And with any of scores of simple programs all over the net that any
little script kiddie could run with its tiny eyes shut, you'd only have to be a newb to
access any of it.

Finally, as we're giving good advice away for free, and assuming he hasn't yet sold
the system, he can forget most of the stuff about 35-pass Peter Gutmann or even
7-pass DoD stuff, unless he's trying to erase evidence of atomic espionage or
something around that level. 2-pass or even just 1-pass obliteration, even just
zeros without any of the psuedo random or related puff, will defeat just about all
normal commercial/hacker/guru attempt to get at any erased data that was recorded
on a modern drive of the sort that's installed in the Aspire One. Anyone who tries to
tell you otherwise is trying to sell you something. IBM used to call it FUD.

Use Eraser or something like it to do a two or three pass wipe of the entire space and
your fetishes will remain forever a secret (or anyways until your lover huffs off to the
National Globe and spills the beans).

 

About 4 or 5 years ago I sold a IBM Thinkkpad to a guy who turned out to be a techie. I don't remember if I reformatted the HD or not. Usually I do and then do a clean reinstall. On the sale above, I may have just deleted my password program. Anyway, the guy shows up a few days later for something that I didn't included with the original purchase and while he was at my house, he told me he found my password file and that he deleted it so that I didn't have to worry about it.

While I wasn't too worried about this guy screwing around with my passwords, when he left, I IMMEDIATELY signed on to every financial site involving a password and changed ALL of them.

So, at the very least I would certainly recommend a reformat and if you can get a program that does the DOD or something similar in wiping the HD, spend the time and perhaps a few coins to do the job right. As someone above mentioned, a HD wiping program will also work on any future computers you buy. Well worht the effort for peace of mind.