How to Permanently Delete Data from a Laptop

Disposing of an old laptop is something we probably have all had to do at some time. Our once faithful piece of tech has, over the years, become slow and unreliable and you’ve decided it’s finally time to move on to a newer model.

But a huge number of people still don’t realise that when you trade in your old machine, give it to a charity or even just take it to the dump (not recommended), you should remove all of your data from it.

Just deleting the files or formatting the hard drive isn’t enough. With the requisite tools, data can still be recovered and you could be giving away a raft of personal information along with the PC. There are numerous free tools available to help recover files that have been accidentally deleted and these can equally be used by people with malicious intent.

So what can you do to ensure that your data is permanently wiped?

Take a Backup

First things first. If the laptop is still working then the you need to take a backup of the data that’s on there. You may think that you’ve copied the files you want to keep but you can almost guarantee that there will be something that you’ve forgotten about and will remember only after the old machine as gone.

You can take a backup of your data to an external hard drive or to a cloud networking service such as Dropbox or OneDrive. Windows has a backup program built in and there are plenty of alternatives available to download from the internet. The advantage of using a cloud service is that it usually allows you to synchronise all of the files back to a new PC, once it’s connected to the internet, with minimum effort.

Cleaning up a Mac System

If you have a Macbook or other Apple laptop or desktop PC to dispose of, the company has provided a built-in tool to delete data safely. If you are running a MacOS version prior to Lion or Mountain Lion you will need to have your system disk to hand in order to access this.

As the machine starts up, hold down the Command and R keys, this will open the Recovery partition. Select the Disk Utility and go to the Erase tab, from there choose 7 Pass Erase. This will overwrite the data with random characters seven times so there’s no chance of recovering it. The process will take a long time so you can go away and leave it running.

Cleaning up a Windows System

What you do to clean up a Windows machine will depend on which version of the operating system it is using. If you have an old machine that is running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7, you’ll need to get hold of a third-party tool in order to erase the data. If you go to a reputable freeware site such as Snapfiles.com you’ll find a selection of data ‘shredding’ tools available. Some of these can be installed in Windows and simply used to delete files, others enable you to create a bootable CD which runs independently of the Windows operating system and can be used to wipe the entire drive. These bootable tools can also be used on computers with other operating systems including Linux.

With the introduction of Windows 8, Microsoft added a secure deletion to the operating system. If you are running Windows 8 or 8.1, open the Charms bar and select Settings, followed by Change PC Settings. You can then select Remove Everything and Reinstall Windows. Select the Thoroughly option rather than Quickly. This will securely destroy everything on the drive and leave you with a fresh install of Windows ready for the next user of the PC.

Windows 10 machines have a broadly similar process. Click on the Start button and choose Settings, then select Update & Security and click on Recovery. Choose the option to Reinstall Windows and select the Remove files and clean the drive setting. If your machine has more than one hard drive partition you will be asked which ones you want to clean, if you are disposing of the machine select all of them.

Non Working Machines

If the system isn’t working, it won’t boot up for example, and you are unable to access the hard drive, that doesn’t mean that it’s safe to dispose of. Someone else could be able to retrieve the data. You can remove the hard disk from the machine and see if you can read it on another computer – external USB adaptors to allow you to do this can be picked up for a few pounds. If you can access it then you can wipe it.

If the disk seems not to be working at all it’s best to physically destroy it to be sure. Exposing it to a large magnet or hitting it with a hammer should be enough to do this, or taking off the cover to expose the platters to the air should make it unreadable.