New
#11
To be totally honest nothing can be totally erased unless you smash the hell out of it but for what most people want or need its good enough the methods Brink mentions . Personaly, I like Active Killdisk it does more than most third party software
"The recovery drive I will have to take a look at. Is it easy to recover or find the HP software online so I can reinstall those?"
NO, you can't get it from HP online because each recovery partition is unique to that model and hardware configuration. If it is new and came with Windows 10, then make a copy before going forward with your plan. Mine is 3 yrs old, came with Win 8.1 so my memory is hazy but I think there is a HP recovery console you boot into and there is an option to backup the HP Recovery partition. You'll know it's correctly done, if you get a message that you can delete the partition or contents now that it's backed up. Since I never would go back 3 yrs, I have since used the partition for storing all applications installed on my system for easy reinstall.
It looks like I will think it through with all the advice I got and decide which route to take. I appreciate your responses. Very helpful.