How to securely delete laptop data?

Got an old laptop with sensitive data on it.

How do I get rid of them completely?

I would like to save myself having to reinstall Windows.

Right it

delete all private data
Empty the trash
Filling the entire hard drive with data and then erasing it?

The best method is and remains to destroy the hard drive. So physically. With a hammer or something.

Alternatively, there's also software that overwrites the hard drive (several times) with garbage. There's of course no guarantee of effectiveness, but it is pretty safe.

What do you think of just putting your above mentioned approaches into practice?

The safest option is to physically damage the laptop's hard drive severely.

However, if you plan to continue using the disk, you will have to use external programs or initiate Windows 10 reset. (However, you should be aware that data can always be restored.)
Which Windows version is the computer using?

No. Empty the recycle bin does not actually delete data.

You can shred the data and delete it "safely" with special programs. To be absolutely sure, you would have to destroy the hard drives or break the NAND (if SSD).

If you really want to erase safely, overwrite the hard disk with a suitable program such as DBAN at least 1x, better 2x.

Then reinstall Windows. - You can't avoid that.

And then? Are his files gone or not? (Just to remind you of the question asked.)

7 per.

How can the data be restored if the storage location has actually been overwritten?

The computer is still to be used.

I agree. That is the question. Can they still be restored even though they were not only deleted but also overwritten?

I would like to avoid reinstalling Windows…

How can files be restored if they have actually been overwritten? I thought the trick with normal restoration is that only the references to the file in the directories are deleted, but the content may still be unchanged.

But if you write the whole record full that's not the case.

He can then by installing a new data carrier.

You can remove the data with programs, but then it is not 100% likely to be gone. Alternatively, you can reinstall Windows, all you need is a USB stick and the Windows ISO tool (https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/software-download/windows10ISO). Should normally only take 30 minutes to 2 hours. If data is so important to you, these would be the best practices.

As far as I know, Windows 7 pro has no built-in function… Only from Windows 8.1 or 10
Without a special tool, the files can no longer be easily restored. This is also the point behind file destruction.