HP Repair Necessary Removing personal data and program before shipping

[Hawaii-Rita]

I need to ship my laptop to HP to fix an extremely noisy fan problem on my laptop.  I bought the laptop in Februray 2020 and had all of my programs and data moved from an old laptop to this one.  Before I ship it to HP, I've been instructed to back-up my data (which I can do using IDRIVE) and then remove any confidential, proprietary, personal or sensitive information (which I don't know how to do without wiping the hard drive.)  That would result in having to restore everything once repaired and which leads me to beleive won't be that easy.  I can't claim I would even know how to do such a thing and possibly not lose my applications and other files I need.  It's bad timing as I need to remote work from home.  

I don't have any HP centers near me. Suggestions on getting this laptop prepared to send to HP? 

[WAWood]

@Hawaii-Rita 

I know everyone just LOVES cloud backup, but I find it very unreliable -- as when your PC then does not boot, HOW EXACTLY are you supposed to restore it from the cloud?

Also, understand that cloud backup can NOT save, nor can it RESTORE your programs because there is no simple way to back those up!  They probably did not tell you that at idrive, now did they?

Also, and you are RIGHT about this, reformatting the drive does not actually REMOVE the personal information; instead, it only makes it more difficult to find.  Any half-way decent forensic data recovery app can get back most, if not all, of the personal data from a reformatted drive.

If you really want your data GONE, what you need to do is the following:
1) Remove the drive from the PC
2) Connect the drive to a working PC using a USB-to-HDD drive adapter (like the one illustrated below)
3) Download and install the free partitioning tool MiniTool Partition Wizard (MTPW) onto the PC
4) Use MTPW to Wipe the partitions on your old drive
5) Reinsert the now blank drive back into your PC

Make a bootable USB recovery drive using the HP cloud recovery tool on a working PC.

The recovery drive can then be used to install Win10 and the HP drivers and utilities that originally came with your PC.

Here is the link: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06162205

Boot your PC with that USB stick and use it to factory reset your PC. Since the drive is actually blank, there will be nothing for anyone to recover from it.

Eventually, the PC will reboot into initial setup. At that point, turn off the PC

Typical USB-to-SSD adapter:

Good Luck

[Hawaii-Rita]

thank you for the info!

[WAWood]

@Hawaii-Rita 

I did want you to know that you don't have to be overly concerned about Tech Support folks spying on your personal data when they are repairing your PC.  They would have no reason to do that and would not benefit from doing that.  They would most likely, either replace the drive or reimage the drive, either of which would result  in your drive NO LONGER containing personal data.

I just wanted to let you know that to completely REMOVE personal data from a drive is a LOT of work -- a lot more than people generally think is involved.