Hard Drive Security

Im planning on selling a hard drive and I was wondering if encrypting a drive with bitlocker and then wiping it while its still locked will influence what data can be recovered. :confused

 

Yes it will. Only your encrypted files should be recovered if attempted.

 

Plan on selling it, just wipe it and reinstall the OS. Unless the person has a mission of trying to find out what you had on there before, I would not worry. Now of course the cost of drives these days for platter drives, it is cheaper to just pull the old one, install a new one, since the existing has probably been in use for a while, and is just waiting to go out.

The reason for stating to put in a new hard drive, is 1) You are keeping the old drive for in case you need something off of it, 2) The person purchasing the system will not come back to you when the drive goes out and state that you sold them a poorly maintained machine, or you caused it to go bad by knowingly selling them a machine with a bad hard drive.

Unless you have been downloading a lot of porn or illegally obtained movies & music and think that the person purchasing it is out to go after you for these activities, just follow the above.