Hi, my friend has a laptop with Windows 10 and would like to sell it. However, he is afraid that his data can still be restored after setting the laptop to the factory settings. How difficult is it to do this? Is there any way to prevent this? Happy to answer in detail.
Is the SSD that the win10 has on it?
There's no "factory reset" on a PC. If so, a backup will be restored.
The PC or hard drives should be formatted before the sale. Then you should reinstall the operating system you want to sell.
If you want to make sure that no data is restored, you should use a virgin hard drive.
A new installation on this hard drive is sufficient for the "normal mortal".
Yes
If it is reset, Windows will delete everything except itself. So the data is gone.
Complemental description: This is why a reset takes a bit for many files.
Okay and what about programs like MiniTool Power Recovery?
You should make sure that the TRIM command is executed during formatting because then your data will really be gone. You can also boot the PC with special operating systems and then carry out a secure erase. Then everything is definitely gone.
Simply formatting is absolutely not safe - anyone who is in the mood can search for a few hours of free tools to have the data restored!
The PC or hard drives should be formatted before the sale. Then you should reinstall the operating system you want to sell.
Formatting is not just formatting - we already have the first problem…
If everything is not deleted securely, you only overwrite a small part of the data and the rest is still there!
If you want to make sure that no data is restored, you should use a virgin hard drive.
You can do that and that would be the simplest - booting the PC with a system from a stick and running a secure erase takes 1-2 hours and you would be safe!
A new installation on this hard drive is sufficient for the "normal mortal".
No! Any fool can run Photorec or Recuva - you don't need to know much about it, or the tools can do everything for you automatically. This is absolutely not certain!
