What do I have to do in Steam before selling a PC?

[MSXCF]

Going to sell one of my computers. I know a PC can be "deauthorized" in Steam, but it seems doing that will deauthorize all my computers.

But uninstalling Steam is as good as deauthorizing the PC, or is it not?

[Overseer]

Formatting will not be a secure measure. The best way is to remove the storage devices and not pass them on.
HDDs you have to write many times with junk data to reliably clean data. But even that can leave data behind in sectors only the firmware can access which requires vendor specific tools to delete.
SSDs you want to use a feature called Secure Erase which again is a firmware command and requires vendor specific tools.
If you just delete/format data you can expect that a good 70% of data can be recovered with forensic software.

[Washell]

Originally posted by Supafly:

Or do a secure format from command prompt. Each pass will wipe the drive and flood it with random data. Just change the x to how many passes it should do. Preferably 2 at a minimum
format c: /c:x

Originally posted by Overseer:

Formatting will not be a secure measure. The best way is to remove the storage devices and not pass them on.
HDDs you have to write many times with junk data to reliably clean data. But even that can leave data behind in sectors only the firmware can access which requires vendor specific tools to delete.
SSDs you want to use a feature called Secure Erase which again is a firmware command and requires vendor specific tools.
If you just delete/format data you can expect that a good 70% of data can be recovered with forensic software.

A long time ago, on hard drives that used different ways of storing magnetic charges at much lower densities, a research paper hypothesized that you could use an electron microscope to detect tiny differences in the magnetic charge level, allowing you to recover the previous data. It was never actually attempted in practice but it did manage to make everyone paranoid and start nuking drives.

There's no way forensic software and certainly not the average Joe is going to recover anything at all after a single pass on modern drives. Recovering anything after a single pass would take specially built machines, a team of people and months of effort to recover even a scrap. A state might do it to recover top secret data from a foreign power. A multibillion dollar company might do it to recover trade secrets from hardware discarded by a competitor. But no-one is going to spend the millions to recover your holiday pics from the nude beach or the login to your steam account.

[davidb11]

The U.S Government would like to know why you think they can't restore data from a formatted drive?

[Supafly]

Originally posted by my new friend:

Originally posted by Supafly:

Or do a secure format from command prompt. Each pass will wipe the drive and flood it with random data. Just change the x to how many passes it should do. Preferably 2 at a minimum
format c: /c:x

I'd still keep them anyways. I have a server full of old drives from pcs I sold or gave away.

The average person won't have the tech to dig deep enough to find anything. If you have top secret information, confidential stuff a competitor may want to steal then sure, keep the drive, otherwise giving it 1/2 passes would be enough to protect your data. Format with 1 or more passes and then install windows over the top of the random data.

[Washell]

Originally posted by davidb11:

The U.S Government would like to know why you think they can't restore data from a formatted drive?

Didn't read the whole thing eh?

Originally posted by Washell:

A state (nation) might do it

[Supafly]

Originally posted by davidb11:

The U.S Government would like to know why you think they can't restore data from a formatted drive?

Formatting with multiple passes flooding the drive with random bits is overwritting any data previously on the drive. Sure it's possible to pull some data of a drive thats been wiped this way but you'd need specialised equipment and the more passes you do the less chance they have of pulling any data.

Therefore formating and flooding a drive with random data should be sufficient for the average user. If you're plotting a major crime, selling drugs, weapons, terrorist act or anything that has you on their watch list then sure they may be able to pull some data and that be comes more difficult with more passes flooding it with random data.

[StickyPawz]

What is this *PC selling* business? ... The natural order is to cannibalise those parts and distribute the best bits to close friends and family members!

[Supafly]

Originally posted by StickyPawz:

What is this *PC selling* business? ... The natural order is to cannibalise those parts and distribute the best bits to close friends and family members!

Get money to help cover cost of upgrades would be one

[davidb11]

Originally posted by Washell:

Originally posted by davidb11:

The U.S Government would like to know why you think they can't restore data from a formatted drive?

Didn't read the whole thing eh?

Originally posted by Washell:

A state (nation) might do it

I did. But you implied it would take them months and months, which is not correct.

That's what I was directly referring to.

[crunchyfrog]

The thing is though just reformatting IS fine. Nobody is going to go to such unreaonable lengths to try and guess that you may have stuff work nicking on your hard drives.


That's ridiculous.

And in any case, let's assume they DO manage it and get access to your Steam account - so what? By then you'll have logged in on your new PC and that data won't work anyway.