resetting back to factory

[toomak]

Just before handing over an old T43 I restored the system back to factory status. How do I make sure that all old documents has been erased? Formatting is not an option as the laptop was recently installed. Thanks

[Brad]

When you do a factory restore the hard drive is reformatted. There are recovery programs and data recovery specialists that can retrieve previous data from these reformatted drives. There are also programs that can write zeros to the drive to make sure your data is unrecoverable. Most times a simple reformat is all that is necessary. Of course if there is confidential information on there then you need to deceide if a simple reformat then reinstall is all you need. If there is any doubt replace the drive with a new one and then reinstall.

Brad