Question about using windows recovery to wipe drives

[Hoppled]

So, I'm selling my old PC and want to make sure I wipe drives in case there is personal data on there. So, I looked up that you can sue the windows recovery tool and check all options "wipe everything on all drives" which takes hours to do and should be sufficient enough for my purposes.

So, there are two drives on the system - a 240GB SATA SSD (boot drive) and 2TB HDD. They are both formatted on the PC and I checked "wipe ALL drives", before confirmation it gives you an option to view all drives that will be affected - for whatever reason, it only shows the HDD's designated letter drive.

This is confusing me since wouldn't it also show the boot drive? I know that by default if you don't check off "wipe everything on all drives" it will just wipe or reset the boot drive, which in my case is the 240GB SSD. If I choose to wipe everything, why wouldn't it also have the boot drive listed in the "view drives that will be affected?" .. Is it just assumed that it will wipe the boot drive since its already listing the secondary HDD drive?

[_I_]

use the windows usb installer media to remove partitions and format the drive again
full format will zero the drive
quick format will wipe the file table, but data will not be cleared, good enough for most cases

[Hoppled]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von _I_:

use the windows usb installer media to remove partitions and format the drive again
full format will zero the drive
quick format will wipe the file table, but data will not be cleared, good enough for most cases

I actually already did that (I think). What I did was have a USB flash drive with Windows 11 installation media on it ready to go, then shutting down the PC and booting it back up with it inserted. When first installing windows, I deleted all partitions and then chose the 240GB SSD to be the boot drive.

Should that have been good enough? Not sure if that was a full or quick format. It was quick when deleting each partition and installing windows, not something that took hours or anything like that.

[N3tRunn3r]

dont use recoveries or backups or such stuff . . .

ALWAYS do a fresh & clean install ... ::

Install Windows 11 24H2 from official Microsoft sources, or in a year, next year Windows 12. DO a fresh & clean install, delete ALL disks and partitions while doing so ::

Reformat/reinstall a fresh and clean W10/W11:
Win11: https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11

Win10: https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows10

W10/11 Clean Install

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsinsider/cleaninstall

1. Plugin your USB with Windows 10/11 install media
   
2. Keep your correct IRST drivers ready inside an extra folder, to be save ..
   
3. Open Windows Start menu
   
4. Restart your PC while holding the Shift key to boot into the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). Once in the Windows Recovery Environment, choose to boot from the USB drive.

Once your drives and partitions are ALL deleted & formatted in setup, continue..

During later stage of fresh install, @ Language Selection

1. cut LAN/WLAN
   
2. "Shift + F10" to open console
   
3. type:

   oobe\bypassnro

4. auto-reboots
   
5. select:

   "I don't have internet"
   "Continue with limited setup"

6. Install your "LOCAL ACCOUNT" and disable all telemetry stuff during setup
   >> Profit

Later you can even setup a PIN in Windows Options without being online/Microsoft account, and if you like - and I suggest it - uninstall Windows OneDrive straight after you enter your freshly installed Windows and disable UAC (User Account Control)!! Afterwards let your machine connect to the internet and use Windows Update and Microsoft Store Apps update.

If updates are done, install AntiVir as "ESET Premium" and "Mozilla Firefox + uBlock Origin" (by Raymond Hill). Then search for more and specific drivers manually, as latest NVIDIA drivers, more special Chipset drivers, latest BIOS firmware, etc ..

https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

https://www.eset.com/int/home/free-trial/

Less is always more .. especially in IT

https://www.av-comparatives.org/comparison/

https://www.av-comparatives.org/tests/summary-report-2023/


Good Luck !!

[Crashed]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von _I_:

use the windows usb installer media to remove partitions and format the drive again
full format will zero the drive
quick format will wipe the file table, but data will not be cleared, good enough for most cases

Doesn't full format just verify the disks?

You want a bootable disk eraser for complete destruction - https://github.com/PartialVolume/shredos.x86_64
Or if you have an old potato https://sourceforge.net/projects/dban/

[SlowClick]

To be confident that the SSD is wiped you might t need to do a 'forensic wipe'.
This article describes several methods.:

https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/secure-erase-ssd-or-hard-drive

I have used Partition magic in the past.

TLDR:
In the noughties (2000 - 2010) I was working as a laptop support person in a school - a student left and sold their laptop back to the school. I bought this for one of my children about to enter university. I re-imaged the laptop before passing it on. Later my child installed a linux on it for the technical software needed for their Masters degree in astrophysics.
Some time later the laptop was stolen, but fortunately was recovered by the police some months later. The thief had installed Windows on it. It was sent to me to see if I could recover my child's Masters thesis and other files because I had access to good data recovery software because the students were always 'losing their homework'! (but I can't remember what I used!).
The point of the story is this: the laptop had been re-imaged, and subsequenty had linux installed on it, then Windows again, but not only was I able to recover my child's university files, but could see some of the files created by the 1st school student. So a fresh install of Windows does not necessarily erase all trace of earlier files - you need to do a forensic erase to do that.

[_I_]

use dban if you are paranoid

but just removing partitions is enough to wipe a drive

during the windows install from usb, when it asks what drive to install the os on, just remove all partitions, it will re create them and format

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Hoppled:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von _I_:

use the windows usb installer media to remove partitions and format the drive again
full format will zero the drive
quick format will wipe the file table, but data will not be cleared, good enough for most cases

I actually already did that (I think). What I did was have a USB flash drive with Windows 11 installation media on it ready to go, then shutting down the PC and booting it back up with it inserted. When first installing windows, I deleted all partitions and then chose the 240GB SSD to be the boot drive.

Should that have been good enough? Not sure if that was a full or quick format. It was quick when deleting each partition and installing windows, not something that took hours or anything like that.

If you have multiple drives, you should never leave the "extra" drives connected. If you want to wipe all the drives quickly by using a WinOS USB installer, fine. But when actually installing WinOS, you should only ever connect the USB drive and the drive you wish to install the OS onto. So the OS can't attach any part of it to a secondary drive, as this is where people run into problems later on. The extra drives can be connected later after the OS install has been completed and you can also easily wipe any extra drives once inside WinOS.

[kingjames488]

depends what level of "clean" you want.

AFAIK SSDs don't have the residual magnetic signatures like an HDD that can be recovered so you probably don't need a multi-pass majigger....

full format should do it.

[Crashed]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kingjames488:

depends what level of "clean" you want.

AFAIK SSDs don't have the residual magnetic signatures like an HDD that can be recovered so you probably don't need a multi-pass majigger....

full format should do it.

Since you are stuck in Windows 7 you may not realize that SSDs work a lot different than HDDs, and that you need to invoke a Secure Erase cycle in the SSD's firmware to get an actual secure erase; zeroing the drive will leave behind over-provisioned blocks still containing sensitive data.

And the whole multi-pass thing is only theoretical for today's HDDs which run so densely that there is no room for magnetic remenence anymore.

[Crashed]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von _I_:

use dban if you are paranoid

but just removing partitions is enough to wipe a drive

during the windows install from usb, when it asks what drive to install the os on, just remove all partitions, it will re create them and format

ShredOS is the fork you need for modern PCs. DBAN was discontinued many years ago due to Blancco buying out the developer.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You can use Active-Kill-Disk for Windows.
Then let a drive wipe reach about 10% then stop it.
Done.

[SlowClick]

Ha - I’ve leant something about old data on hdds and ssds.

[kingjames488]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Crashed:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von kingjames488:

depends what level of "clean" you want.

AFAIK SSDs don't have the residual magnetic signatures like an HDD that can be recovered so you probably don't need a multi-pass majigger....

full format should do it.

Since you are stuck in Windows 7 you may not realize that SSDs work a lot different than HDDs, and that you need to invoke a Secure Erase cycle in the SSD's firmware to get an actual secure erase; zeroing the drive will leave behind over-provisioned blocks still containing sensitive data.

And the whole multi-pass thing is only theoretical for today's HDDs which run so densely that there is no room for magnetic remenence anymore.

ok, smash it with a hammer.