NogBad
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Post by NogBad on Dec 9, 2021 10:51:02 GMT
Long time no posts so you may assume both my Bodhis are behaving themselves! However it's time to say goodbye to one of them. My ancient Dell laptop is no longer of any use to me, so I'm donating it to charity. I'm running Bodhi on it, so how do I either (a) format the disk or (b) do a factory reset? This may well be a hardware question unrelated to Bodhi, but I'm ever hopeful... not to mention grateful for any assistance.
NogBad P.S. Just a thought, but would the quickest way be to simply reinstall Bodhi, which will hopefully overwrite the contents of the HDD? P.P.S. Ah...I say "simply" but I think I've thrown away my Bodhi install disk in a recent clearout...
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Post by Hippytaff on Dec 9, 2021 16:32:01 GMT
Hi Nogbad
A fresh install should do it 🙂
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enigma9o7
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Post by enigma9o7 on Dec 9, 2021 17:58:32 GMT
Fresh install will wipe the old stuff, yep.
Also if its just personal stuff you care about, you could just wipe your home folder. Any apps you'd installed would remain installed, but any personal files or custom config files would be gone.... although still would be your username and password.
If you are leaving an installed version on there, even clean install, I'd set it for autologin, and have it display the root password (maybe use zenity or open a text file etc in startupcommands)... or at least put a sticker on the laptop itself with it I guess is simpler.
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kev392
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Post by kev392 on Dec 10, 2021 6:54:58 GMT
I have mine set to autologin and have a nice simple word I can remember as my password. I don't need to write it down, as it's a word I can always remember.
I've seen those that think it needs to be complicated, like it's their bank login. Then they forget it and go through all the rigamarole of resetting the password or they just reinstall.
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NogBad
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Post by NogBad on Dec 10, 2021 12:11:19 GMT
Thanks all, I'll go with the fresh install option, and as you say, stick an easy to remember password on (NOT PASSWORD!!!). Dash it all, gotta burn another installation disk - laptop is too old to boot from USB. Ho hum. At least I'll have an installation disk - which I WILL keep - to go with my USB.
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enigma9o7
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Post by enigma9o7 on Dec 10, 2021 16:36:06 GMT
I have mine set to autologin and have a nice simple word I can remember as my password. I don't need to write it down, as it's a word I can always remember. I've seen those that think it needs to be complicated, like it's their bank login. Then they forget it and go through all the rigamarole of resetting the password or they just reinstall.
Right, but you're not donating it to charity. The point is for whoever gets it to not have any issue finding that password, otherwise a preinstalled linux is far less useful. Whether its simple or complicated is irrelvant, don't want the user to have to guess at all.
But I guess if you dont want to use zenity/textfile and dont want to put it on a sticker, then "password" would seem like a good idea to me, the most likely guess.
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NogBad
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Post by NogBad on Dec 14, 2021 16:02:14 GMT
Well, I burnt a new ISO disk, installed 5.1.0 legacy, all went swimmingly, now to find a charity which wants an old laptop. Actually my local supermarket takes them, what happens to them after that, who knows? Hopefully someone somewhere will be able to use it, even if (heaven forfend) they have to slap that nice Mr Gates' chief invention number 7 on it. As for the password, it's on a sticker, and easy to remember, being relevant to anyone who wants to MANAGE the system.
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Post by deepspeed on Dec 26, 2021 0:29:13 GMT
Wiping data is a bit more complex that simply formatting a partition. Unless that data is overwritten, it is technically still there on the drive, only not referenced by a file name any longer. There are special data recovery tools which can read this data and find deleted files and recover them and find info in them.
If you want totally wiped drives, look up something like bleachbit which will actively overwrite all free space on a drive. This kind of operation is disk-intensive and takes a while, but it's the way to properly wipe data if you don't want someone finding it.
The chances of someone doing this kind of data recovery are very slim outside of a forensic investigation, but it is possible.
And if you want to deliver a laptop with a totally blank drive, boot a live distro, delete all partitions on the drive, then run bleachbit on the whole HDD so it overwrites everything with a few passes of randomness.
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knut
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Post by knut on Dec 30, 2021 12:59:23 GMT
As someone who regularly donates laptops, I would second the recommendation of deepspeed to first remove the data reliably. You do not know in whose hands the HDD will fall in the future and if the data is not completely overwritten, restoring it, at least some of it, is trivially easy. There are some linux command line tools for data restoration and also some commercial easy to use GUI applications. For overwriting the old data, you do not even need a special program: dd or shred are two command line tools that are able to do that and are available on nearly every linux live system. So if you have a Bodhi image, you can boot that and use it to remove the old data before the new install. I usually use shred, which is a utility explicitly made for overwriting data. You can find some ideas on how to use dd or shred to wipe a HDD here: linuxconfig.org/hard-drive-shredding-on-linuxI usually use: shred -v -n 3 -zFor three overwrites and a last one with zeros. Newer Dell systems have a BIOS/UEFI option to wipe on next boot, but that was introduced around 3-5 years ago, I think. So probably not available on your ancient system. |
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