Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

I am selling aspire aspire one zg5 and need to clean up info

May 3, 2012 11:46PM PDT

I'm selling this, it runs on linux lite and I was thinking that I need to wipe all the personal info. I keep reading about re boot discs and recovery discs but my aspire has no disk drive. I'm not very good with linux and was hoping to find an easy solution to my problem!
How should I go about making sure that there is no personal info buried somewhere on the hard disk?
Thanks for any help!

Jacqui

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
It's like those cars with no spare tire.
May 4, 2012 3:11AM PDT

That's fine until you need it. The same for laptops without a CD/DVD drive. Now you need it to create restore media and to wipe then restore the machine.

While there might be a special key to push to restore it to the factory settings this is not a sure thing as it does not clear all sectors on the HDD.

I wonder if this is your first encounter where you need the tools to do the job?
Bob

- Collapse -
Did you try the Alt+F10 method?
May 4, 2012 3:20AM PDT
- Collapse -
Answer
aspire one zg5
May 21, 2012 6:45PM PDT

I agree wit the other reviews. Thanks.