What to Do before Selling Your Computer in Windows 10, 8, 7?

How do I prepare my computer for sale Windows 10?

Hi all. Recently, I bought a new desktop in the specs of 5700XT+3700X to replace my old Lenovo laptop for gaming. I want to put the old laptop on second-hand market but have no idea what to do before selling computer beforehand. I believe something should be done for things like personal data security. What should I do to a computer before selling it?

5 things to do before selling your computer

Over time, our computers can become extremely slower than what it looked like when we first got them. Then, maybe it’s time for a new one. But how should we deal with the old one? Many users tend to sell it to others or put it on second-hand market. They’re both good ideas.

However, what to do before selling your computer is a common question. People worry about leakage of personal data after selling their PCs or worry that buyers ask for refund after they find the PCs are in bad condition. So, here, I listed 5 things you should do before selling your computer.

Back up files

The first thing you should do before selling your computer is take a backup of important files like videos, photos, and apps because you’re going to erase hard drives in following steps. If the amount of the files is not too large, you could consider using any cloud service for backup such as Dropbox and OneDrive. Or you can directly copy those files into a USB flash drive for safety’s sake; If there’re plenty of files waiting to be backed up, you might as well try the Windows inbuilt “Backup and Restore” utility to back up all the files into an external device.

Find product keys for installed software

If you plan on selling your computer to others and consider buying a new one, you’d better find and back up product keys for both software and OS that is currently installed on your PC before selling it so that you can install them again on your new PC with the same product keys. If you’ve forgotten the keys and have never made a backup either, you might as well resort to some third-party product key finder to help find and back up them for installed software and operating system.

Wipe hard drive

Data leakage can cause many problems like financial loss and privacy leakage. In case of the leakage, you’re supposed to erase all data on your PC before selling it to other people. But how? Many people may think of format when it comes to data erase. However, formatting hard drive doesn’t necessarily delete data because it just means your system marks that space as rewritable and thus, it’s possible to retrieve all data with some third-party recovery software.

So, how to deal with this issue? Don’t worry, in the following paragraphs, a piece of powerful and efficient disk manager will be introduced and that’s AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. With it, you can wipe a hard drive within seconds and the erased data can’t be recovered anymore. Moreover, you can also clone a disk to another to replace all data on the destination disk with the inbuilt disk clone feature.

What to do before selling computer? Download this impressive freeware to have a try.

How to wipe a hard disk completely?

Follow the steps below to learn the easiest way to wipe an entire hard disk quickly.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard and wait until the info of all disks and partitions appear.

Step 2. Select the hard disk you want to wipe and right-click on it. Then, select the “Wipe Hard Drive” option.

Step 3. There’ll be 4 wiping methods displayed. Here, we recommend the first one “Fill sectors with Zero”. Hit “OK” to proceed.

Note: To choose the other 3 methods, you must upgrade to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Step 4. After sent back to the main interface, hit “Apply” on the upper left to commit the changes.

Optional: how to wipe an SSD once for all?

Nowadays, more and more people tend to replace the HDD on their PC with an SSD for better performance including shorter boot time, less noise, and quicker write speed. Due to the different structures of HDDs and SSDs, you shouldn’t use the same method to wipe SSD. Otherwise, the lifespan of them will be shortened. Under this circumstance, you might as well turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional for help if your PC runs on an SSD. It provides a feature of “SSD Secure Erase” to efficiently wipe an SSD without any damage to it.

Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Step 2. In the top toolbar, click "Wipe" > "SSD Secure Erase".

Step 3. Select the SSD disk you’re going to wipe and hit “Next” again.

Step 4. In this window, you can see the info of the selected SSD. To proceed, hit “Next”.

Step 5. If you’re prompted with the error, that means your SSD is in a frozen state and you have to relieve it first.

1. Open your PC case, if it’s a laptop, open the rear cover or drive shell.

2. Unplug the power cable from the SSD.

3. Disconnect the SATA data cable from the drive.

4. Reconnect the SATA cable to the SATA port on the SSD.

5. Plug the power cable back into the drive’s power connector.

Step 6. After the operations above, hit “Next” to start the SSD secure erase.

Step 7. After it’s done, click on “Finish” to quit.

Reinstall OS

If the computer you’re going to sell is very old, it could run literally slowly. To give a better user experience to the next owner, you’d better reinstall the operating system to make the PC feel newer. You can install the latest Windows 10 or install other versions in terms of the buyer’s preference.

Clean up the PC

Finally, remember to keep your computer clean before you sell it. Remover all of your passwords used to lock the PC. Sweep the machine’s screen, keyboard, mouse and so on to make it looks as new as possible. In this way, you may get a better price.

Conclusion

What to do before selling your computer? In this article, there are 5 points listed and the most important is wiping your hard drive which can possibly keep you from much trouble. With the Standard and Professional edition of AOMEI Partition Assistant, you can wipe both HDD and SSD thoroughly. If you want to try this software on Server, please try the Server edition.