Advice on recuva and selling hard drive

I have just sold a laptop for a good price and had intended to replace the hard drive with a new one before sale. However I can't get the hard drive cover off as there are a couple of deeply embedded screws with broken threads, so decided to leave the drive in and wipe it a couple of times. The laptop was hardly used since the current ssd drive was installed but there may have been some passwords or bank details done at some point. So I did internal secure erase two or three times. And then ran Recuva just to check nothing left on it.

On the first run of Recuva it only found four files, which were clearly Windows install files. I then did a deep scan and it has found 131314 files! I am assuming most of these are the Windows 10 OS (20H2) but it is an awful lot of files to look through. Any tips as to how I can quickly tell by looking if any are files that could compromise security?

Does Recuva show you the extension of each file?

Does it show the path to the file?

Or does it just report the number of files found?

Ok. While it found that many files it only recovered 79. Most of which seem to be jpeg, bitmap or png - a couple of .cab. So assume nothing much on there.

The pictures were all Windows icons and wallpapers. Not sure what the two .cab files are. So looks like the secure erase worked well and it has only recovered the previous install of Windows (I reinstalled it on top of previous install).

Download and run Eraser -

Eraser – Secure Erase Files from Hard Drives

Hazel123 said:

I did internal secure erase two or three times.

I've never done a secure erase, but if Recuva can recover 79 files, I'd assume the "internal secure erase" failed outright unless erase means "erase most, but not all".

Can you provide details on how you did the "internal secure erase" so I can make sure not to use that procedure in the future?

I think the files recovered were after Windows was installed which was AFTER the secure erase. As such it has only found Windows files. So secure erase done (did it 3 times). Windows 10 installed. Long story but decided to reinstall Windows 10 again. So presumably the recovered files were from the earlier install of Windows 10 from before formatting and reinstalling.

I used Internal Secure Erase via Parted Magic.

Data Removal: Darik's Boot and Nuke - DBAN

Is DBAN suitable for SSD's ?

Recently I used Recuva to try to recover lost files on a USB drive. Not impressed with Recuva'a veracity, different numbers of files located. Several free file recovery programs to compare, Minitool and Easeus among them.

OldNavyGuy said:

Download and run Eraser -

Eraser – Secure Erase Files from Hard Drives

Thanks for that - but I don't think it would do the SSD any good! The Internal secure erase doesn't write anything on the drive and is supposed to be suitable for SSD drives.

Anyway the upshot is - it did work. It only recovered files installed after the SSD was erased.