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I'm returning my laptop and I'm just going to go through the Windows installation via USB, delete the partitions through there, and reinstall windows. It's an HDD, in case that matters.

That's enough for ensuring that no one can somehow regain access to the data that was deleted, right?

fiziks
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This isn't enough, at least for someone determined to get your data. Their are many different tools that'll do the job, I've heard good things about Disk Wipe. Its portable, free, and simple. You can get it here

Carter Temm
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No, it's almost nothing and most of data can be restored.

The best if you use specialized tool, like shred. It can be found on may linux distributions. There is simple howto:

https://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-securely-destroy-wipe-data-on-hard-drives-with-shred

Jaroslav Kucera
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  • "Most of the data can be restored" if you're willing to pay a boatload of money or have very sophisticated lab setup, with the appropriate tools to attempt data recovery (expensive). The average person is not going to attempt that level of recovery. A simple reformat is definitely good enough, unless you have some top secret files. As a price example for professional data recovery, [DriveSavers](https://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/) had a starting price of £700 to recover data from a 120 GB SD card... For that price, someone can gladly attempt to recover my worthless personal data. – DrZoo Nov 03 '17 at 18:21
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    @DrZoo Windows install, even if you delete all the original partitions, does not overwrite the entire drive with 0s or 1s. A free program like TestDisk can recover a significant portion of the data on a 1TB drive if the only thing put on it was a fresh copy of Windows... no lab required. Now if the drive has been completely overwritten, by something like DBAN, then the only way to get the data back is with the more sophisticated and expensive methods you suggested (and even then it might not be recoverable). – techturtle Nov 03 '17 at 18:55