How to securely wipe a drive before selling your laptop
If your PC is feeling cluttered, you’re having technical issues or you’re preparing to sell your computer, it may be time to factory reset Windows 10 or 11. That way, you can bring your PC back to the way it came when you took it out of the box. With all this in mind, it’s also worth considering how battery-intensive the apps you want to use will be. Most laptops on the market will be able to get through a day of casual use without too much worry, though smaller-size laptops will likely leave you with less to work with day to day. If you’re concerned about futureproofing your laptop, shoot for higher specs than you currently require, but don’t push the boat out too far, as technology is always evolving.
These days you can reset any laptop, including HP models, using the standard reset procedure in Windows 10. See our overview guide on how to reset any Windows 10 computer for more information. You can factory reset an HP laptop using Windows Settings to revert the laptop to its original state. You can factory reset your HP laptop in two different ways to return it to its original condition. Sometimes, when you format a drive, you wipe out the file header and File Allocation Table pointer record information.
How Factory Reset Your Devices
There are plenty of things to think about to ensure you’re getting a machine that will support you long-term. Select “Just remove my files” if you plan to give the computer to someone you trust because that process is much faster.
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The price will vary per device, demand, and condition. 6- Finally, click the Reset button to begin the process. Your computer will now reboot to complete the reset process. 4- Next, click on “Remove everything” to ensure all of your files, apps, and settings will be deleted.
When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers. Plan to go without the computer for 15 minutes to an hour while the reset process completes. You can cancel the reset while Windows downloads and prepares files for install, but you can’t cancel the reset after that point. You can leave the device unattended while it resets.
But what if you don’t want to pay $15 for Parted Magic and don’t have a motherboard or manufacturer software that will securely erase your SSD? A cheap and universal way is to use Windows 10 or 11’s built-in diskpart utility at the command prompt. The method and capabilities vary for each manufacturer’s software.
Take your laptop to the post office, purchase the shipping that you advertised, and send off your laptop to your buyer. Read more about Sell laptop for cash here. Be sure to email or text the buyer with a tracking number if you are provided with one.Package the laptop up well and address it all correctly. Whether you send your laptop via courier, or the buyer picks it up can often depend on the sale platform you used. If you traded in your laptop, you will most likely be able to just drop it off in store.