I do not want to say that I'm a PC layman. But I just don't know: Before formatting my Windows 7 laptop, do I have to uninstall all the applications on it before formatting to make sure that everything has been completely removed?
No. Formatting clears them all.
No, you don't have to, since the formatting deletes everything on the hard drive
No, you don't have to. Formatting will "lose" all applications and data on the disk.
But to put it technically quite correctly:
The data can of course still be restored as long as it is not overwritten.
So when it comes to "secure deletion", formatting is not enough. "Secure erase" means that the disk must be completely written with new data. There are programs that overwrite the disk several times with random patterns from 1 and 0. You certainly don't need this for the domestic use case.
If you want to sell the record, I recommend overwriting it with random data at least once. Undoing simple formatting is very, very easy.
You don't have to format at all. It depends primarily on what you want to achieve.
I know that too, but I want to
Do you have to clear out a house before it is torn down?
well, when formatting all data is made flat. I.e. In fact, it is simply allowed to be overwritten with the new ones.
so you can leave everything on it without hesitation before formatting.
OK. So, you don't have to uninstall anything, you can leave everything as it is.
You can format and everything is gone.
The question I'm asking yourself, how do you want to format your laptop with Windows 7? And how is it going to be in the future? Should there be a newer operating system on it? Should someone else get the laptop and install a system on it themselves? Maybe I'm too far thinking too, and you just wanted to know, yes or no, when formatting a hard drive…
