Erase tools on Vaio Z (but not recovery)

Hi guys,

I currently have a VGN-Z21WN and I am going to be selling the laptop on eBay as I have just ordered the new VPN Z i5 one (can't wait!).

My laptop originally came with Vista (which is of course on the recovery partition) but I upgraded to Windows 7 with the CDs from sony. I want to put it 100% back to factory default (so Vista) but I will give the winner the upgrade CDs too.

My question though is how I can fully and permanently delete my data. I am aware that formatting doesn't do this, so I found a utility called "dban" which is an ISO file which is meant to fully delete files though.

My worry is how I can then get back to restoring Vista from the recovery... I believe I can select the partition to target (so in my case C , but I just want to check if you guys have any advice.

Thank you.

 

If I understand you correctly, you have a factory build of Vista that you upgraded to Windows 7.

If you can, burn the recovery DVD's off. They will allow you to rebuild to the factory state after you clean your drive, including the recovery partition. You should try this first as it is the easiest and safest way.

If you can't burn the DVD's, make sure you can boot into the recovery environment. If you can, make a disk image of the recovery partition with Ghost or something then use a utility to wipe the Windows partition like KillDisk. If you have a traditional hard drive (non-SSD), this is where your personal data resides and is the only partition you need to wipe. When you are done, you can restore the recovery partition and run the recover the "C:" drive option.

DBAN is pretty easy to use and does mil-spec deletions, but it nukes every drive it can find. It's more of a nuke than a precision bomb, hence the name.

 

Hi guys.

I am about to do this killdisk thing tomorrow (as my auction on eBay ends on Friday so I want to be able to ship it on Saturday).

I have done a little research online and apparently KillDisk does make you confirm which partitions you want to target so that sounds fine if I just select C: and not the recovery one.

My question now though, is after it's done, I obviously won't be able to boot up into Windows. Therefore, is there a keystroke during boot that takes me into the RECOVERY partition? I seem to think there is..but cannot find it anywhere.

Thanks!

 

Also another qu (as a backup in case it goes wrong!!), in VAIO Recovery Center there's an option of "Create Recovery Discs" -- is this basically a complete copy of what the RECOVERY partition does, so let's say this killdisk does stop me entering the recovery partition... the CD would restore it exactly like the normal recovery would?

 

If the DVD works, yes, it should do the same as the recovery partition. But several people here have reported that the DVDs fail during restore. Even if burning multiple copies of the DVD.

If I were to wipe the drive but leave the recovery partition alone, here's what I would do:

Boot a Linux LiveCD.
Open a terminal window and become root ("su -").
Check which partition is the big one ("fdisk -l"), likely sda3
Wipe that partition ("dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda3").
Boot the recovery partition and recover the system from there.

It's free, won't touch either the recovery partition nor the boot partition with the memtest tool, and doesn't rely on a fully working recovery DVD.

 

Thanks for that! Oh okay...

Hopefully I wouldn't be relying on the DVD anyway, as hopefully killdisk won't touch that partition.

Are you aware of a keystroke during boot that brings up the recovery center though on the Sony VAIO Z? I know there is one, I just can't find it now... argh!

 

Press the " F10" button when you turn on your VAIO notebook & see the "VAIO" startup screen.

 

Thanks for that!

Just to add this worked fine. I firstly restored the C: drive using F10 at boot, then after it had installed fresh I used KillDisk to just target C:. Then booting wouldn't work as it said no OS, but hitting F10 during the VAIO screen let me reinstall everything.

Thanks!! Just hope it sells on ebay now