[ebonyruffles]

I've been trying out a laptop for a few days & decided to return it/exchange it. I posted another thread about reformatting it but decided to leave it to the store after running into trouble. Their policy is reformat & reinstall for any computer returns. Do I need to worry about deleting any info before I take it in? I haven't done banking or anything on secure sites. Nothing added to documents, music. No saved passwords. I changed the registered owner to something vague rather than my full name. I don't think there's anything on it to be concerned about. User account is my first name only. Other than deleting cookies, history etc do I need to do anything else? Don't want to reformat by myself. They will do it anyway.

[1002richards]

Hi,
What you've done sounds pretty comprehensive. If you want to double-check, this Eraser might suit your needs. It's freeware and can be run from a USB stick:


Eraser will securely erase selected files and folders, or even whole disks, located on your hard drive (it works with any drive, including IDE, SCSI and RAID, and CD-RWs). Eraser can overwrite the data area with your choice of a variety of random data patterns, and can also wipe data in the paging file, Internet cache, temporary files, Internet cookies, unused disk space, and a number of other places where data can secretly lurk. It can handle FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS partitions. Erasing files with a high level of security will always be a difficult and time consuming task, and absolute 100% safety cannot be guaranteed. However, Eraser makes the task about as easy as it can be, at a security level that exceeds most conceivable requirements.

Inserted from <http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-secure-erase-utility.htm>

[ebonyruffles]

Thanks. Never hurts to be cautious.

[1002richards]

You're welcome.