Reformat a second hand laptop?

reply to post by InvisibleAlbatross


All a format does, unless it is a low level format, is replace the file system. If you fear something in the drive, erase the drive. I use Darik's Boot And Nuke.
Download the iso and burn it as an image to CD-R. Start the computer on CD, and when it come up, type quick, and press enter. It may take several hours, and when finished, your hard drive is like new. I have done this many times, and right now am running a hard drive that has been erased by this method three times.

Once the program is running, take out the CD and out in your operating system CD/DVD. I run Linus myself, easy to install and configure, and nice forums to help out the those new to Linux.
My distro:
PCLinuxOS

Most other Linux Distros

Linux Torrent Downloads

Don't worry about the MAC address it is removed from the packet header when it hits the gateway. The MAC address is not routable and is only visible to interfaces on that that shared network. Each interface along the route removes the MAC address and replaces it with its own.

Do a simple format if your worried.

For those saying that it can't be done.

Well I reformatted it. Got everything I needed, so it was time-consuming, but not terribly hard to format and reload everything. I disabled the internet access, to avoid any issues with my work. Thanks for the advice, everyone. I may be coming back to ask about Linux.

Bumping this.... gonna be doing some research on dynamic or shuffled MAC Address and found this in the search. Look forward to a thread! We should ALL be doing this.

Originally posted by spyder550
Don't worry about the MAC address it is removed from the packet header when it hits the gateway. The MAC address is not routable and is only visible to interfaces on that that shared network. Each interface along the route removes the MAC address and replaces it with its own.

Do a simple format if your worried.

edit on 1-4-2011 by spyder550 because: (no reason given)

Do you happen to have a source for this?
From what I've heard from hacker friends of mine (in the past, not recently) is that the best way for TPTB to track us is via MAC address.
What would be the purpose of not having attached MAC address in our world of increased tracking of everything?

Originally posted by Thermo Klein

Originally posted by spyder550
Don't worry about the MAC address it is removed from the packet header when it hits the gateway. The MAC address is not routable and is only visible to interfaces on that that shared network. Each interface along the route removes the MAC address and replaces it with its own.

Do a simple format if your worried.

edit on 1-4-2011 by spyder550 because: (no reason given)

Do you happen to have a source for this?
From what I've heard from hacker friends of mine (in the past, not recently) is that the best way for TPTB to track us is via MAC address.
What would be the purpose of not having attached MAC address in our world of increased tracking of everything

This is how the OSI Model works. Consider MAC addresses to only change when they enter a layer 3 device (router).

The Source and Destination IP address is not going to change. Host 1 IP address will stay as being the source IP and the Host 2 IP address will stay the destination IP address.

The MAC address is going to change each time it goes from one hope to another. (Except switches... they don't change anything). Frame leaving HOST 1 is going to have a source MAC of Host 1 and a destination MAC of Router 1.

Router 1 is going to strip that info off and then will make the source MAC address of Router1's exiting interface, and making Router2's interface as the destination MAC address.

Then the same will happen... Router2 is going to change the source/destination info to the source MAC being the Router2 interface that it is going out, and the destination will be Host2's MAC address.

MAC's can be traced provided there is an IP address associated and that the source MAC has not been altered (spoofed). MAC's are not traced on the Internet.

Also there is a lot of confusion out there surrounding drive wiping. The 7, 10, 25 times recommendations are a myth. One wipe will suffice as according to many leading forensics folks. This doesn't mean deleting the data, it means wiping the drive as noted by some other members posts.

brill