this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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How to delete everything but OS securely? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by ShunkW@lemmy.world to c/techsupport@lemmy.world
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I'm looking to sell my laptop. I've used stuff like DBAN before but that nukes the whole drive obviously. Is there any good way to leave the OS intact after a reset but also make sure that there's no recoverable data?

Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

Edit to add: I don't have the product key for the pre installed Windows 10 OS. Maybe there's a way to recover that and reinstall after a full wipe?

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[โ€“] ClipperDefiance@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The best I can offer for your original question is to delete everything you don't want and then run something like BleachBit to shred the data. As for the second question, if a computer originally came with Windows then it should automatically activate after reinstalling.