How to clear a PC for passing on.

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Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,780
1,517
51
Wiltshire
Dad showed my something interesting the other day.

"Feel this"

It was swollen and rather too warm.

"Dad, I think you need a new battery; that ones going to explode."

He now uses the laptop without the battery...Fine as he never takes it anywhere. (How he got sold a laptop I have no idea.)

Anyhow, his machines on its last legs...And Im getting a new one.

So, I will pass my old machine onto him. (He bought it for me...)

I know how to transfer my files...What else do I need to sort out?
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
There is no way to completely erase files without specialist utilities and experience. However since you are passing the machine on to a family member, I would suggest format the hard drive then re-install your operating system of choice. It is possible that, during boot up, there is a "setup" option associated with an F key (often F2). This might allow you to restore the machine to factory defaults (as it was when you bought it). Again, it is not 100% secure, but should be koay for your purposes.
 

seg1959

Forager
Feb 8, 2010
118
0
Surrey, UK
(New) replacement batteries can be found on eBay for £15 to £25. I got one for my 8 yet old Dell a few months back, so I can pass it on to my youngest son. If your dad is happy with his, why change?
As for wiping out yours, as others have said, restore factory settings (on boot up with Fn or from DVD) and wipe free space with one of the many freeware disk erasers.

Seg
 
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Blaidd

Nomad
Jun 23, 2013
354
0
UK
For a non family member I would remove the hard drive. For your dad just remove the pictures of that wild weekend with a ghillie suit and a pair a waders.

Sent using Tapatalk 2. So this may make no sense.
 
Nov 29, 2004
7,808
22
Scotland
If I was paranoid I'd take the drive out and drill holes in it, if not I'd take the drive out and take it to bits for the really cool super magnets and the platters are quite handy to use as mirrors and such.

Of course if I was extremely paranoid I'd have one of these printed on the laptop case. :)

sV3R91I.jpg


Link
 
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Paul_B

Bushcrafter through and through
Jul 14, 2008
6,154
1,546
Cumbria
Or get a battery for £15 and have a few pints from the £15 you've saved by not replacing your hard drive then you get to keep your old laptop as a backup.
I got my old Dell one replaced with a full 9 cell battery and it added a really long battery life. It came with a 6 cell Dell battery. I know I dismantled it and found 3 empty chambers for the missing cells.
 

Jared

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Sep 8, 2005
3,390
640
50
Wales
Yeah, replace the hard drive with a new one would be my solution too.

If its got a spinning HDD, then replacing it with a SSD will increase performance significantly.

This is assuming you can install a new copy of whatever OS (Windows?) on to the new drive.
 

Paul_B

Bushcrafter through and through
Jul 14, 2008
6,154
1,546
Cumbria
It's an old laptop, I doubt SSD is needed since the rest of it is probably old spec. It's an expensive upgrade for an improvement that I am guessing will be masked by something else that is going slow like an old chipset or graphic chip. Only guessing and could be wrong. SSD do have a lot faster read write than HDDs have so can help, of course, speeding things up.

Still think a battery for his current laptop is a better call if he's happy with it. I mean that will mean another electrical equipment gets a longer life rather than being disposed of. Reduce, reuse or recycle and all that green stuff. Of course dispose of old batteries responsibly according to local waste regulations!!
 

ADz-1983

Native
Oct 4, 2012
1,603
11
Hull / East Yorkshire
There is no way to completely erase files without specialist utilities and experience.

That isn't true. There are plenty of easy to use software's that you can run via desktop or at boot to erase a disk well beyond recovery and no experience is needed. It's simply a case of overwriting sectors of the HDD multiple times.

Something like a boot disk..
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
This has many useful tools.

You could even use something like CCleaner and set it to also wipe free space multiple times. There are many easy solutions, too may to list.

Just search for things like Zero writing or low-level formatting software.



Dad showed my something interesting the other day.

"Feel this"

It was swollen and rather too warm.


Umm, that isnt really appropriate for this forum.
 
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santaman2000

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Jan 15, 2011
16,909
1,114
67
Florida
That isn't true. There are plenty of easy to use software's that you can run via desktop or at boot to erase a disk well beyond recovery and no experience is needed. It's simply a case of overwriting sectors of the HDD multiple times.

Something like a boot disk..
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
This has many useful tools.

You could even use something like CCleaner and set it to also wipe free space multiple times. There are many easy solutions, too may to list.

Just search for things like Zero writing or low-level formatting software.

Said a specialist. Now could you say all that in ordinary people's language?
 

ebt.

Nomad
Mar 20, 2012
262
0
Brighton, UK
Technology debates always seem fractious and prone to overkill :) I assume the machine works fine apart the battery?

Replacement battery can be found usually in the £15-40 range.

If you're sure dad wont pass the laptop onto anyone later, just reinstall windows from the image partition (if it hasnt got one, use the disks, if you dont have either, install a variant of linux thats friendly, like mint)

...... or if you're worried about data security then download DBAN (free forever), which is perfectly good at trashing data permanently. Then either reinstall the OS you have or go for linux mint.

I've done the dban and linux mint route for a few friends parents, they're usually surprised at how easy it is to operate... but then they're not installing stupid games, MS office or anything else. They just want a working machine thats simple, fast (on old hardware) and does email/web browsing.

Whatever OS you go for, dont make their account the admin account..... always have them sat in a user level account.

PS. usually laptop batteries are stacks of 18650's and its not all of them that are buggered, if you know what you're doing theres free cells there!
 
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