Restoring my first PC, what's "best practice"?

[TGO]

I'm about to restore/erase my old gaming PC, first time for me on a Windows system, and I'd like to know if I'm following "best practice" here. Apart from the obvious such as backing up files that I want to keep around, is this this plan the best one I could follow to really have a peace of mind selling or recycling the system? I've got 2 SSDs by different manufactures, 2nd one has only had games on it.

1. Run Windows restore tool with "Clean data" ticked
2. Use the drive manufactures secure erase tools(or is this overkill?)
3. Sell/recycle PC (without drives?)

Is there anything else you usually do when you're about to get rid of an old system? Also, do you usually log out of everything before erasing or do you just skip that?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

If you are paranoid about it, selling it without the drives or with a new cheap drive seem like a reasonable options to me.

[Radium_Angel]

13 minutes ago, TGO said:

Use the drive manufactures secure erase tools(or is this overkill?)

If you are selling the system to someone else, and had personal data on the system prior, then it's never overkill.

 

[Lurking]

16 minutes ago, TGO said:

I'm about to restore/erase my old gaming PC, first time for me on a Windows system, and I'd like to know if I'm following "best practice" here. Apart from the obvious such as backing up files that I want to keep around, is this this plan the best one I could follow to really have a peace of mind selling or recycling the system? I've got 2 drives by different manufactures, 2nd one has only had games on it.

1. Run Windows restore tool with "Clean data" ticked
2. Use the drive manufactures secure erase tools(or is this overkill?)
3. Sell/recycle PC (without drives?)

Is there anything else you usually do when you're about to get rid of an old system? Also, do you usually log out of everything before erasing or do you just skip that?

I'd run one of those BIOS secure erase tools (or drive manufacturer tool) and then do a fresh OS install. Assuming you have the license to give away an activated Windows. Or don't activate Windows (new owner can use Windows with some limitations without activation and buy a key if they wish)

 

Just know on an HDD I used a USB drive tool to secure erase and just 3 passes took over a day. It was a 1.5TB WD green drive. Faster HDD should be faster. But it meets DoD requirements, so should be secure enough, even if someone physically takes the platters out of the drive to analyze.

[Gorgon]

Depends on your objectives really.

 

If you want to maximize your profit then selling the system off in parts may yield more money than selling it as a complete Gaming PC but may also lead to more e-waste being left over.

 

If you want the system in a state where it can be re-used then it will be a little more work as you'll want to preserve the Windows OS License. This is one case where a pre-built system may be easier as most have tools to restore the system to factory default maintaining the OS License.

 

In any case you should ensure that all personal data is wiped on the system. How much effort you put into the wipe depends on your level of paranoia.

[TGO]

Alright, I think I'll keep the drives after secure erasing them. What do you usually do with old drives though? Destroy or store them?

 

It's probably different around the globe, but is it better to sell the system with a brand new cheap drive or just none at all and leave it up to the buyer?

[Lurking]

53 minutes ago, TGO said:

Alright, I think I'll keep the drives after secure erasing them. What do you usually do with old drives though? Destroy or store them?

 

It's probably different around the globe, but is it better to sell the system with a brand new cheap drive or just none at all and leave it up to the buyer?

A complete system buyer would expect a working system ready to use. So with at least an OS drive. A PC without drive may also considered non functioning.

 

Tinkerers are more likely to just want parts. As others said, parts may be easier to sell for a bit more $. All depends on what you have.

 

Really, a secure erase is safe enough to sell the drive. The NSA may have capability to read data (or may not), but they can get access to any Internet connected PC anyway. So it is moot to worry about extremely sophisticated data thieves. 8 passes of secure erase and fresh OS installed would make reading any old data impossible short of some space alien technology.

[TGO]

1 hour ago, Lurking said:

8 passes of secure erase and fresh OS installed would make reading any old data impossible short of some space alien technology.

On a SSD? I thought running secure erase once was enough on these.

[Lurking]

1 minute ago, TGO said:

On a SSD? I thought running secure erase once was enough on these.

Technically yes. I didn't know you had SSD since you said drives. With SSD, also ignore my above time it takes since that was for a slow HDD.

 

The software I used had several options. One was some Department of Defence approved option with 3 or 8 passes. You know, if you happen to have the nuclear codes or something. Or you are extremely paranoid. 

 

You really don't have to make e-waste out of the drives just because you are worried about data.

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, TGO said:

I'm about to restore/erase my old gaming PC, first time for me on a Windows system, and I'd like to know if I'm following "best practice" here. Apart from the obvious such as backing up files that I want to keep around, is this this plan the best one I could follow to really have a peace of mind selling or recycling the system? I've got 2 drives by different manufactures, 2nd one has only had games on it.

1. Run Windows restore tool with "Clean data" ticked
2. Use the drive manufactures secure erase tools(or is this overkill?)
3. Sell/recycle PC (without drives?)

Is there anything else you usually do when you're about to get rid of an old system? Also, do you usually log out of everything before erasing or do you just skip that?

If you are selling it, remove the existing hard drive and sell it without one.

 

If you are recycling it, same.

 

Keep the hard drives as long as possible, in general, as that prevents your data from ever ending up in someone elses hands. If you are wanting to sell the drive used, then you will want to use software to do a "military grade wipe" aka DOD wipe. 

https://www.killdisk.com/dod.htm

Take note of the footnote

Note "sanitize" is always "destroy" or "degauss"

For hard drives only, "overwrite" is sufficient unless the information is secret. 

 

That tells you everything. So Degaussing would destroy a hard drive (it would likely cause the heads to be ripped apart, (where as tape and floppies are bare magnetic media))

 

At any rate, it IS sufficient to erase a drive by overwriting it three times with different data unless it is a SSD.

 

SSD's can be erased in an instant, even by accident. These require using a BIOS feature to do purposely, and is costly to the wear on the SSD.

 

My personal recommendation is "people are a little too obsessed with what people do with used computers" and your best bet is to remove the drives and dispose of them separately, years later once any data on it is already stale enough to be useless (such as credit card information.) You can always plug the drive back into your computer with a USB chassis if you need to personally rescue data, but you can dispose of the drive alone at any time.

 

On the flip side of that, if you are trying to sell a "working" computer to someone you know, then I would forgo the "sanitize" and just reformat the drive and install the OS again. But selling it on ebay or such I would not include the drives in the same listing, just to ensure that someone doesn't grab it and immediately unformat/undelete the drive.

 

 

 

[Lurking]

this is what i had used in the past since my old PC BIOS didn't have an option (and the WD tool for some reason also didn't).

 

On old tablets or some other devices that were just outdated and i didn't really want to disassemble, i took a drill and drilled a couple of holes through the device hoping it will destroy something. No crucial data, but an old tablet may have your Netflix login or so (obviously i could just change that password). My daughter had a game controller thing and I really could not find a way to factory-reset it and had to destroy instead of giving it away for free. I think at some time I did the drill thing to an old HDD. No way a normal person gets data of that. 

 

I never bought a used PC, but if it comes without drive and OS, it isn't a PC, it is a pile of parts. Like selling a car without wheels. As a Joe sixpack I now have to buy a drive, install, it figure out how to buy and install Windows, and then hope the rest of the hardware actually works. I bet 99% of potential buyers don't want to deal with that or fail at some point. they basically want an AIO, but cheaper. 

 

If the SSD are somehow useful to you, sell all the parts. OR sell as a functioning PC with the SSD (and OS). Everything in between isn't worth it, IMHO. but you can just post it on CL and FB and see how it goes. but selling a complet, but not functioning, PC isn't get you much. 

 

A while ago I had sold a complete 10 year old PC with W11. I lowered the price to $60, and no one bought it. I then parted it out and sold all parts for maybe $70 and kept the SSD. The SSD was the only thing that was useful at all. It is a 128GB Samsung SATA SSD. In my new rig I use it for the download folder to save a tiny bit wear on my NVME. And if i ever tinker around and build a secondary PC, I can use it for an OS drive. 

 

I bet if you list what the hardware is,people can give better advice on what is worthwhile to do. All I'm saying is, there is zero need to destroy a functioning drive that still could serve you or someone else. 

 

 

 

[TGO]

13 hours ago, Lurking said:

Technically yes. I didn't know you had SSD since you said drives. With SSD, also ignore my above time it takes since that was for a slow HDD.

Sorry, clarified that in the OP now.

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

My personal recommendation is "people are a little too obsessed with what people do with used computers" and your best bet is to remove the drives and dispose of them separately, years later once any data on it is already stale enough to be useless (such as credit card information.) You can always plug the drive back into your computer with a USB chassis if you need to personally rescue data, but you can dispose of the drive alone at any time.

This is exactly what I had in mind actually. When you dispose the drive, do you destroy it first or just toss it in at the recycling center?

10 hours ago, Lurking said:

this is what i had used in the past since my old PC BIOS didn't have an option (and the WD tool for some reason also didn't).

It didn't? One of my drives is a WD Blue and I'm sure I saw an option to create a bootable USB for their secure erase tool.

 

Replying more generally, my original plan is still solid? I'm going to check around locally to see what people are willing to buy. Problem is that the 1080Ti in that system started dying this year and the CPU (7700K) is being dropped from all Windows support when W10 hits the grave in 2 years. Perhaps I'll just put it up without drives(+Windows) and see if anyone's willing to buy it or in parts.

[Kisai]

2 minutes ago, TGO said:

 

This is exactly what I had in mind actually. When you dispose the drive, do you destroy it first or just toss it in at the recycling center?

If you are concerned that someone might recover the data, do a full format of it, or a zero'ing of it (use tools, or a linux usb boot drive like DBAN) is "good enough" to dissuade someone from recovering the data, but if you need to be sure, you will want to open it up, remove the platters and physically break/scratch/shred/bend them. Then break the PCB's in half. Then recycle them.

 

Generally, you don't need to do that except for data that you absolutely must ensure is destroyed (eg tax records, private photos/video and credit card transaction data.) To be honest, recovering data is difficult, but people sometimes see it as a personal challenge to just grab used drives off ebay to recover the data.

 

Corporate Recyclers are SUPPOSED to wipe and destroy drives, but that tends to not be the case because they want to resell parts. You can wipe stuff, usually "good enough" if you overwrite them a few times, but that takes time and energy. If you're only going to get $20 for the drive, you're not going to pay someone $100 (time and energy) to wipe the drive. That's why drives are generally destroyed instead (because someone can just take a hydraulic press, take a drill to it, or even just drop it off a 10 story building into a parking lot.) Takes a few seconds, and maybe you get some entertainment out of it.

 

2 minutes ago, TGO said:

Replying more generally, my original plan is still solid? I'm going to check around locally to see what people are willing to buy. Problem is that the 1080Ti in that system started dying this year and the CPU (7700K) is being dropped from all Windows support when W10 hits the grave in 2 years. Perhaps I'll just put it up without drives(+Windows) and see if anyone's willing to buy it or in parts.

You can still use that CPU in a linux system. So don't write it completely off. If someone just needs the CPU or CPU+MB+RAM combo. 6th gen and 7th gen cpu's are still viable to run linux web/nas servers.

 

[SimplyChunk]

If it's an m.2 drive it'll go through a medium sized paper shredder with very little effort.  if it's 2.5 inch drive open it up and put the circuit board through the same shredder

[fisterkev]

Instead of putting your drive through a paper shredder or bashing it with a hammer... If you don't want to include the SSD in a full build to sell, then why not just keep it as a physical backup for your data? It's not a bad thing to have.

[TGO]

Thanks for all the replies!

 

I'll go ahead and wipe them with Windows, then their secure erase tools and then I'll probably keep them stored until I need them. Or it's time to let go.

[Mark Kaine]

On 7/5/2023 at 8:47 PM, TGO said:

Alright, I think I'll keep the drives after secure erasing them. What do you usually do with old drives though? Destroy or store them?

 

It's probably different around the globe, but is it better to sell the system with a brand new cheap drive or just none at all and leave it up to the buyer?

if u keep them then why delete them? free backups of ur old files basically... (can be read by any windows/ linux system too)

 

 

On 7/6/2023 at 12:57 PM, TGO said:

my original plan is still solid?

no, it seems extremely wasteful 

[Mihle]

When I sold my PC with an SSD and a HDD few years ago, I nuked the data on the HDD with DBAN, I think it writes zeros, then random data and then zeros again, or something like that and at that point I would consider it safe. For the SSD I used Samsung's own feature to wipe it, should be fine because it's an SSD.

[37748585862723896]

This is what I heard 2 decades ago

 

After wiping a drive, write junk files to fill the drive , repeat a few times

 

Even some could restore anything, that would be your junk files

[TGO]

10 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

if u keep them then why delete them? free backups of ur old files basically... (can be read by any windows/ linux system too)

I don't really feel like having a drive with a lot of information and data about me just laying around, ripe for accidentally being tossed or stolen. The only things I haven't transferred to the new system I can just put on a USB drive. My new main SSD has half a terabyte more capacity than both my old drives combined, don't see the need of putting them in it.

 

10 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

no, it seems extremely wasteful 

What difference is it between keeping them erased versus not when I have no use for them?

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, TGO said:

I don't really feel like having a drive with a lot of information and data about me just laying around, ripe for accidentally being tossed or stolen. 

That's what usually happens, people forget, and stick things in the yard sale.

 

2 hours ago, TGO said:

What difference is it between keeping them erased versus not when I have no use for them?

Depends what was on it. If it was just like itunes mp3's or something, it doesn't matter, but people again underestimate the value of personal photos and documents.

 

I personally do not get rid of hard drives and stick them in a box. I'm more worried about the possibility someone recovering a drive out of curiosity.

 

If you want to 'overwrite' with impunity, rip a video, download (a rickroll) off youtube if you have to, and just copy it hundreds of times until the disk space is exhausted.