What would you do before selling your laptop?

[thesmallgod]

I will advise you to sell the laptop without the hard drive. The technologies are evolving and it could be dangerous selling that laptop off with the hard drive even though you must have formatted the laptop many times. Nobody can tell in which hands the laptop is going to end up in so it is better you remove the drive and use it for other purpose and retire it in a safe place.

[mycryptocoin]

I think you are taking this issue too seriously. The fact that recovering a file is a very difficult job, takes time and both. Moreover, as far as I know, in the field of cryptocurrencies, the most important thing for you is the Private Key - you can transfer them to your new computer as the file that stores the Private Key that you can transfer to drive C and proceed to reinstall the operating system for the computer. When installing, please format the entire C drive, so wanting to recover data before installing is really a very difficult job and most of you are safe before this problem!

[philipma1957]

i have a cloner that offers zero over writes.

all bits set to zero.

it has multiple options and I use 3x most often.

[UserU]

I will advise you to sell the laptop without the hard drive. The technologies are evolving and it could be dangerous selling that laptop off with the hard drive even though you must have formatted the laptop many times. Nobody can tell in which hands the laptop is going to end up in so it is better you remove the drive and use it for other purpose and retire it in a safe place.

That's like selling a car without the seats. Or if you want to do the buyer a favor, get a new one/ replacement.

[peter0425]

If you really want to be totally sure and at the same time have the peace of mind, probably just swap out the hard drive. For your past files to be as totally as unrecoverable as possible(I'm not even sure if there's such thing as 100% unrecoverable), as far as I know it's probably going to be quite complicated that you might as well just save yourself the time and change the hard drive.

Indeed,the Hard drive is the most important part in this one,so better either swap the HD or buy new HD to put on your old Laptop before selling it so there are zero chance of being recovered.

Good for you that being aware of this because others just have sold their old Gadgets and they will be at risk.

[JohnBitCo]

I'm faced with this very question myself. I just bought a new laptop, and it is on the way - my old laptop already has a new owner waiting for her. Still, I used to do a lot of crypto stuff with this laptop, and I'm afraid a regular drive wipe won't be enough to get rid of all my private key stuff that could give access to my crypto to someone else...

So other than doing a regular wipe, maybe 2 or 3, what would you do to guarantee that those keys are not recoverable? Or should I just surrender to my paranoia, buy a new drive, and take out the current one? I'm pretty sure people here have faced this very question here.

How would you protect your Bitcoin and alt-coins private keys from being taken over by someone attempting to recover data from your drive on purpose or accidentally?

You should format your laptop completely before giving it to someone. Do not perform the quick format, rather do the detailed format so that nothing can be recovered for your hard disk. Although it may take some time, but you will be saved from being hacked.

[boyptc]

To remove your worries replace the drive with a new one and take the old.

This is a good suggestion though.

Private keys for your bitcoin wallet are highly secured and cannot be easily recovered by anyone other than you IF you keep this on your drive not online. Though I didn't sell my laptop yet since I started in bitcoin I am also planning and never thought of it as well. Now I am thinking to seek technical assistance from someone that is legit and I trusted much.

Anyway, right now I am hoping that someone in this thread could really give us an idea or option on how to make sure that our private key can no longer be recovered by the nested user when I sell this one too.

Like what I've said on your case, just keep it if you are unsure.

The person that you might seek help can also keep it on his own while you, not knowing that he has already a copy of it whether you format it for so many times.

It's not advisable to put a copy of your private keys on your personal computers that you use most of the time. Having a written form copy is always the best.

[ethereumhunter]

I never sell my old laptop to other people because I don't think that will be what they search. But if I have to sell the laptop, I will move all of my data from the old laptop into an external hard disk drive including my wallet if I store in my laptop, reinstall with the fresh OS, and make sure that my data is all delete. Maybe you need to install a new wallet on the separate place and don't install it in your laptop, or you can buy a ledger to moves all of your coins into that wallet, so you don't have to worry.

[coiner-88]

This is really a very important issue. You have to be very careful about this. In no way should any important password or private keys be left out. Then you will have to face a lot of losses. You have to delete all your passwords and private key store. You can do this yourself if you want. You don't have to pay extra for this.

[Kamilaz]

i would probably suggest you to just buy a new drive. i wouldn't wanna risk it, personally.