Help! - Manual Reinstall or Dell DataSafe Local Backup to Wipe Computer??

I am selling my computer and want to make sure all my information on it can never be recovered by the new user. Should I reinstall the Windows 7 OS manually or is using a program like Dell's Data Safe restore to factory settings sufficient? I want to make sure a new user cannot access my info.

 

i think either result in the same state of vulnerability. both a manual reinstall or factory reset will essentially do the same thing with the old data -- overwrite whatever sectors it needs and "flag" the rest as "overwritable." the factory reset's probably a little less work. any data not overwritten is still there and potentially recoverable though. unless you have seriously confidential information stored on the drive and a suspicion that the machine could end up with somebody with prying eyes, you're probably okay either way.

the only way to completely erase the drive is to use a utility like darik's boot and nuke. those types of utilities overwrite the entire drive with fresh 1's and/or 0's. ergo your safest bet is to nuke the drive then reinstall windows. note that the recovery partition will be nuked as well; i don't know if you can spare partitions.