How to Remove Data Permanently before You Sell Used Laptop

Before you sell your used laptop, you should delete your data completely from the laptop. This way you won’t have the fear of sensitive and private data falling into the wrong hands

Here is a look at the different steps to follow to permanently delete data from your laptop. This will be applicable to any laptop from an Apple MacBook to a Dell laptop, the process is same for any type of laptop.

1 – Backing up the data

You might want to remove all data before you sell the used laptop. But prior to deleting the data, you must always take a backup of all your personal information from the laptop. There are certain things that you should avoid backing up and some items that should be copied.

The things that should be avoided are songs and videos that you can download from the internet. The data you should back up is the files, documents related to your work, and personal photos and videos.

Copy the important files onto an external hard disk. If the files are smaller in size, you can even upload them to your Google cloud storage.

2 – Deregister from all the paid software

Since you’ll be selling the laptop, you do not want others to use the software you paid for.

Generally, people deregister the antivirus and the Microsoft Office subscription on their laptops. If you do not deregister, the new software will not work on your new laptop.

3 – Cleaning up your laptop

This is the Windows 10 Reset PC option we are talking about. However, this option will delete everything from the computer but will not properly clean the files.

If a trained professional gets access to your laptop, then there are chances they can still access the data you thought was deleted. However, this is an important step in deleting all your data and should not be skipped.

4 – Software for wiping the data clean

Windows has created a free security tool named Eraser to help people delete the entire data from their hard drives.

Eraser guarantees a complete deletion of all the files and documents from your laptop. This is a free tool and does the job brilliantly as it continuously keeps on overwriting it several times. It takes a couple of hours to overwrite the hard drives completely; hence plan your schedule accordingly.

5 – The final step of resetting

Once Eraser has completed its job, you can be sure that the data is now irrecoverable, and no hacker can now find the data from your hard drives.

The conventional method is simple and will remove everything from your laptop. To achieve this, you need to head over to Update and Security from the Settings.

Then from the Recovery tab, click on the Reset this PC option. Follow the steps mentioned and click on Delete Everything.

Wrapping up

This was a step-by-step guide on how you can remove data permanently from your used laptop before selling. Make sure to carry these out and then connect with a reputed buyer like Budli. We are a certified old laptop buyer and can offer great deals on your second-hand laptop.