Does Reset Work Well

[Margo1]

Hello.  Different people are telling me different things regarding wiping a disk clean. I will be returning a computer to HP that I bought. If I do a reset, will the entire hard drive be wiped clean so that there will be no security risk? I was just informed that since I have an HDD hard drive, that I should use a specific program, like DBAN, to wipe the disk clean, not do a reset. However, I don't have a Windows 10 recovery to reinstall the OS. Thank you.

[mdklassen · Accepted solution]

> If I do a reset, will the entire hard drive be wiped clean so that there will be no security risk?

A "computer forensics" expert will be able to read every sector on the disk-drive, to be able to see what was previously recorded.

Turn your computer off.

Turn your computer on, and immediately look for a message like "press <blah> to run System Recovery".

Press that <blah> key, to start the reinstallation of Windows.

When you get to a screen that shows the available location(s) where Windows can be installed,

one of the "advanced" options will be to delete the partition that currently is the 'C:' partition.

Delete it, and then "create" a new partition, and choose to "format" it.

That "format" will offer a "quick" option, but do not choose that option, because the other option will be to write "zero" values all over the entire partition -- thus replacing all of your personal files.

When the "format" completes, press-and-hold-down the ON/OFF button for up to 30 seconds, until the computer turns off.

Now, that 'C:' partition has been "zeroed-out".