finally getting around to selling my laptop

so yeah, i've finally found a buyer on craigslist that lives near me so I can meet face to face, which usually weeds out scams and the usual suspects. Gonna part with my g50vt for a measly 300$...but I figure that's worth it as I have no need for it anyway.

One thing i'm concerned about is data on the hard drive. I'm not the most computer savy so what I did was just restore the computer to it's original factory settings. This seems to have done the trick as I can't seem to find anything that I had on the computer prior to the restore.

My question is, did I do enough to protect myself from data theft and whatnot? I have a feeling I didn't which is why i'm asking...I should probably just get a new hard drive and os. any suggestions? thanks

edit: oh and who would you start, ryan grant, marshawn lynch or benjarvus green-ellis? ...lol. frank gore is my other rb. =P

 

As long as you dont have more than one partition with data on doing a factory restore will wipe the hard drive and it should confirm this to you.

If you have separate partitions you can just format these once you have your data off of them.

 

cool, thanks dallers. I heard there were ways one could find "deleted" files through programs like PhotoRec - CGSecurity. =P
Guess i'll go ahead and sell it. or something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPlCnRFkNU0&feature=related

 

Looks like a pretty flimsy program to be honest it also says that you have to immediately run the program before doing anything else before that section of the HDD is overwritten. If you have formatted it and reinstalled windows onto the disc since deleting your files I doubt anyone would be able to get hold of it.