Wiping HD but leaving O/S

Have a friend who needs his old laptop wiped clean. I was going to use DBAN, but his cd/dvd drive does not work.

Is there a program out there that will clean off the machine yet leave the O/S in tact? He is giving this away to someone who has an external usb cdrom drive that lives out of state.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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Comments

vCole

Not that a know off, a clean format to wipe all data would be a format. Which of course would not leave an OS.

HeroPsycho

The person receiving the laptop and the person giving it away would both benefit from fully erasing the hard drive, including the OS. It would securely get rid of all personal data, and the person receiving it would have a freshly installed OS that would have 0% chance of already being compromised.

With that said, SDelete would do the trick...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx

You however would need to tell it which files to delete. You can easily drag/drop them to SDelete using the following tip:

http://lifehacker.com/software/hard-drives/the-windows-file-shredder-211357.php

tiersten

No. Not without going through every single directory on the HD. Would be easier and quicker to just format and find a USB CD drive.

KGhaleon

Just getting the CD key by using Jellybeans keyfinder:
magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

then reinstall the operating system and drivers(from a CD or website). That's the normal routine for transferring a computer to someone else. I believe you can clean the slackspace on the hard drive using certain tools.

drainey

You should be able to get DBAN to run from a floppy. Of course that means you need a floppy drive.

skrpune

KGhaleon wrote: »

Just getting the CD key by using Jellybeans keyfinder:
magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/

then reinstall the operating system and drivers(from a CD or website). That's the normal routine for transferring a computer to someone else. I believe you can clean the slackspace on the hard drive using certain tools.

+1

If you wipe the drive & reinstall the OS, that's probably the easiest way to go about leaving the OS & getting rid of the files. It's not a bad idea to do a reinstall anyway, it will remove the bloat that has probably amassed over time and will probably make the user happier overall.