selling laptop, whats the easiest way to delete everything?

**Scarecrow3517** · September 1st, 2010

Hey i'm selling my laptop and I want to wipe it first. It's duel booting ubuntu and vista but vista is infected and not booting. Whats the easiest way to get rid of everything on it? preferably i would want to leave ubuntu and remove vista and all installed programs and files. I don't mind wiping everything off it though.

thanks

**Bachstelze** · September 1st, 2010

Probably better to wipe everything, you never know who could get their hands on it. Just use good ol' dd:

Code:

sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda

From a Live CD of course, no filesystem on the drive must be mounted.

**mike555** · September 1st, 2010

Boot into ubuntu live cd , start gparted , then format the partitions you want to erase , but don't delete them or it will mess up grub .......... then boot up and "update-grub"

--- of course if you want to erase it all then format it all (from the live cd)......

**Scarecrow3517** · September 2nd, 2010

thanks for the help but i don't think i have a livecd, i downloaded ubuntu.

what else can i do?

**AlphaLexman** · September 2nd, 2010

Do you want to sell the laptop with an OS on it, or without?

**Marlonsm** · September 2nd, 2010

You can always use a pendrive as liveCD.
Take a look here for a how-to (there is plenty of them in the internet):
http://www.howtoforge.com/easy-way-t...u-usb-pendrive