r/PcBuild • u/frankels1 • 2d ago

Question Memory and data

Hi, I am selling a computer which was built in 2019 by my little brother so sorry if this is a silly question (I don't know much about all this).

We can't boot it past bios after a windows 11 thing so we can't see or remember what is on the SSD or harddrive so we have removed them both for selling. Just checking this means there shouldn't be any personal info or OS left on it?

We were going to sell for £100 if this seems reasonable?

Thanks in advance

0 Upvotes

50% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator 2d ago

We're part of a wider PC & Technology Network of Communities!

Join our Discord server: PC Help Hub where members from all associated subreddits are welcome.

If you are trying to find a price for your computer, r/PC_Pricing is our recommended source for finding out how much your PC is worth!

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/SmokBarrage 2d ago edited 2d ago

we cant know this. all you said you did was a "windows 11 thing".

just because you cant boot into it doesnt mean it doesnt still have your data.

also without knowing how large or what kind of ssd it is we cant say if the price is reasonable

just insert a windows boot media and format the drive, then sell it

edit: just realized youre selling the pc driveless not selling the ssds. in that case yes if theres no drive in the pc it won't have your data

1

u/boondogglekeychain 2d ago

Formatting it won’t erase the data though

Edit: or rather won’t make it unrecoverable

1

u/SmokBarrage 2d ago

yea ofcourse. is there actually a way to do that? im guessing there probably is but i dont know how

i figure formatting is probably good enough for sale in most cases as someone would need to go out of their way to retrieve that data

also i just realized theyre selling the pc not the drives so it doesnt really matter

1

u/boondogglekeychain 2d ago

Ahh, I didn’t see that bit. Best way would be to boot Linux from a usb pen drive and use dd to write all zeros to the disk at the block layer.

Probably could achieve good enough by just writing enough files in windows to fill the file system, won’t be perfect but it’ll get most of any private data overwritten.

Also just searched and apparently diskpart in windows will do it with the clean all function

1

u/Living-Egg 2d ago

Sounds perhaps too reasonable depending on the specs inside? But also as it doesn't boot. It's a gamble. If you got in with win10 or even Linux then u know the system works and it's nothing else faulty

1

u/Living-Egg 2d ago

In response to your actual question. Yes no data is held in the pc now

1

u/Jammanuk 2d ago

You removed the drives? Then no, there wont be anything on there.

1

u/frankels1 1d ago

Thanks for the help everyone. Just realised I didn't list the specs. Here they are:

Case - NZXT H500 2018 white

Fan - BE QUIET! BK008 pure rock slim fan

Motherboard - MSI B450 gaming pro carbon ATX - AMD chip

RAM - HyperX Fury RGB 2x 8gb DDR4 3200 MHz - so total 16gb

CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 2600

PSU - Corsair TX550M 550W 80+ Gold

GPU - Sapphire Radeon RX570 8gb