Topic: Laptop advice please

[richierich]

Hopefully someone can advise me if my proposed work replacement laptop is okay?? and a couple of questions.

The laptop they propose to buy to replace my ageing Dell Latitude D810 is as follows;

Dell Latitude E6400, Intel Core Duo 2.66Ghz, 4GB RAM, 250GB HD, 256MB VIDEO, DVD/RW, 3YR WARR
Integrated Webcam, Intel WiFi, B/TOOTH, Port replicator, Windows XP PRO, MS Office 2007 SBE

It means nothing to me, might as well be written in Chinese. Is this a good machine?


Plus;
I want to move dvdprofiler over to new laptop, how best to do this and keep all my high res images?
In addition, I have several thousand music files, is there an easy way to move across the 2 laptops?
Lastly, a lot of personal data and 'history' is on my current laptop, I'd prefer this to be wiped 100% without a reformat, ie I don't trust the IT guy to do this without 'peeking'. Is there a way i can do this?

Thanks in advance
Rich

[RossRoy]

Dell Latitude E6400, Intel Core Duo 2.66Ghz, 4GB RAM, 250GB HD, 256MB VIDEO, DVD/RW, 3YR WARR
Integrated Webcam, Intel WiFi, B/TOOTH, Port replicator, Windows XP PRO, MS Office 2007 SBE

It's a pretty decent machine. It should do whatever you wish it to do efficiently.

I want to move dvdprofiler over to new laptop, how best to do this and keep all my high res images?

Easiest way is

• File -> Backup Database...
• Click the radio button on "Specific Location"
• Click "Browse" and tell it to save to a USB key (just make sure the USB key is big enough to fit your backup - you might want to save the file to your dektop first and see how big it is)
• Make sure the radio button next to "Full Backup" is selected, and it should pick up everything: covers, profiles, layouts, translation files, etc etc etc

On the new laptop, install DVD Profiler. Create the new database on start up. Go redo all your settings. Then do File -> Restore Database... and you should be good to go!

In addition, I have several thousand music files, is there an easy way to move across the 2 laptops?

USB key. Preferably 2. Fill first USB key, move to second computer, copy files to new computer. While files are copied to second computer, fill a second USB key on previous computer. Switch, rinse, repeat until the folder is all copied over.

Lastly, a lot of personal data and 'history' is on my current laptop, I'd prefer this to be wiped 100% without a reformat, ie I don't trust the IT guy to do this without 'peeking'. Is there a way i can do this?

This should do the trick: http://www.dban.org/

Download the ISO file. Burn it to a CD. Then follow the guide from the PDF I attached to this post.

Just ignore the part about Gutmann 35 passes, it's useless. Your laptop would be wiping the hard drive for almost a full week, yet the default configuration should do the trick just fine. If you really want to be sure, run the default 3 or 4 times, but NOT 35 times!

[Jimmy]

USB key. Preferably 2. Fill first USB key, move to second computer, copy files to new computer. While files are copied to second computer, fill a second USB key on previous computer. Switch, rinse, repeat until the folder is all copied over.

It would be faster to link them together if the two laptop has a network card, no?

[RossRoy]

USB key. Preferably 2. Fill first USB key, move to second computer, copy files to new computer. While files are copied to second computer, fill a second USB key on previous computer. Switch, rinse, repeat until the folder is all copied over.

It would be faster to link them together if the two laptop has a network card, no?

Yeah, but Rich said "easy way". So I went for the easiest. Unless he's comfortable with creating shares, setting permissions, and connecting to them.

[Halo2]

I see the E6400 at my work. They are good machines. Not the lightest, but solid. They have only been around for about 3 months. Haven't seen any fail out of the box. All are running Vista or Windows 7.

The dban file Sébastien provided sounds like it will wipe the whole drive, including the OS. Is that what you want to do? I read your statement, "Lastly, a lot of personal data and 'history' is on my current laptop, I'd prefer this to be wiped 100% without a reformat, ie I don't trust the IT guy to do this without 'peeking'. Is there a way i can do this?", to mean that you wanted your history wiped out, but the OS left intact. If that is what you want to do instead of wiping out the whole drive, log on as the local administrator, right click on My Computer and select properties. Select the Advanced tab and select User Profiles/Settings. Depending on how your computer is set up and how you log on, you will see a list of profiles that are on the computer. You want to select the one you use to log on with, either computer name/user name or domain/alias. Then select Delete and the profile will be deleted from the drive. You cannot delete the profile you are currently logged on with, that's why you need to log on as the local administrator. It is not securely erased, but it would take a lot of work to restore some of the data and would probably be too time consuming for the IT guy if he just wanted to 'peek' at your data.

Hope this is helpful without being too confusing. If I misunderstood what you were asking, please disregard and use the dban program to scrub your drive prior to giving it to IT.

[DJ Doena]

Just ignore the part about Gutmann 35 passes, it's useless. Your laptop would be wiping the hard drive for almost a full week, yet the default configuration should do the trick just fine. If you really want to be sure, run the default 3 or 4 times, but NOT 35 times!

One Overwrite is enough. When every byte on the hard disk is overwritten once, it's humanly impossible to restore the data that was there before.

There are some urban legends that claim that some secret agencies could open the hard drive physically and look how each metal pin is pointed and determine where he pointed before and thus recreate old data. But that's cock&bull. And even if it were true, it couldn't be done by some BuyMore clerk.

[RossRoy]

I see the E6400 at my work. They are good machines. Not the lightest, but solid. They have only been around for about 3 months. Haven't seen any fail out of the box. All are running Vista or Windows 7.

The dban file Sébastien provided sounds like it will wipe the whole drive, including the OS. Is that what you want to do? I read your statement, "Lastly, a lot of personal data and 'history' is on my current laptop, I'd prefer this to be wiped 100% without a reformat, ie I don't trust the IT guy to do this without 'peeking'. Is there a way i can do this?", to mean that you wanted your history wiped out, but the OS left intact. If that is what you want to do instead of wiping out the whole drive, log on as the local administrator, right click on My Computer and select properties. Select the Advanced tab and select User Profiles/Settings. Depending on how your computer is set up and how you log on, you will see a list of profiles that are on the computer. You want to select the one you use to log on with, either computer name/user name or domain/alias. Then select Delete and the profile will be deleted from the drive. You cannot delete the profile you are currently logged on with, that's why you need to log on as the local administrator. It is not securely erased, but it would take a lot of work to restore some of the data and would probably be too time consuming for the IT guy if he just wanted to 'peek' at your data.

Hope this is helpful without being too confusing. If I misunderstood what you were asking, please disregard and use the dban program to scrub your drive prior to giving it to IT.

I did not even consider that he could not want to scrub the whole thing 

If you only want to wipe your own data completely, do what Halo2 told you (or simply delete the files manually). Then, to be safe, you could download JKDefragGUI from here => http://www.emro.nl/freeware/

Officially, it is a front end to a free defragmenter (the one I use actually), but it's got a "wash" option to securely wipe free space. Select your hard drive, set to run 1 time, and click run. Let it do its thing.

[richierich]

• File -> Backup Database...
• Click the radio button on "Specific Location"
• Click "Browse" and tell it to save to a USB key (just make sure the USB key is big enough to fit your backup - you might want to save the file to your dektop first and see how big it is)
• Make sure the radio button next to "Full Backup" is selected, and it should pick up everything: covers, profiles, layouts, translation files, etc etc etc

The backup file is 320,000kbs 

[richierich]

In addition, I have several thousand music files, is there an easy way to move across the 2 laptops?

USB key. Preferably 2. Fill first USB key, move to second computer, copy files to new computer. While files are copied to second computer, fill a second USB key on previous computer. Switch, rinse, repeat until the folder is all copied over.

Yes, thanks for this, will do it this way 

[richierich]

The dban file Sébastien provided sounds like it will wipe the whole drive, including the OS. Is that what you want to do? I read your statement, "Lastly, a lot of personal data and 'history' is on my current laptop, I'd prefer this to be wiped 100% without a reformat, ie I don't trust the IT guy to do this without 'peeking'. Is there a way i can do this?", to mean that you wanted your history wiped out, but the OS left intact. If that is what you want to do instead of wiping out the whole drive, log on as the local administrator, right click on My Computer and select properties. Select the Advanced tab and select User Profiles/Settings. Depending on how your computer is set up and how you log on, you will see a list of profiles that are on the computer. You want to select the one you use to log on with, either computer name/user name or domain/alias. Then select Delete and the profile will be deleted from the drive. You cannot delete the profile you are currently logged on with, that's why you need to log on as the local administrator. It is not securely erased, but it would take a lot of work to restore some of the data and would probably be too time consuming for the IT guy if he just wanted to 'peek' at your data.

Hope this is helpful without being too confusing. If I misunderstood what you were asking, please disregard and use the dban program to scrub your drive prior to giving it to IT.

Yes Halo you have it right, I wish to delete history without impacting the OS.
Not sure if I can sign-on as anyone but myself, I certainly can't do it as administrator, that is the IT guy.

[RossRoy]

The backup file is 320,000kbs 

I'm guessing you mean 320 MegaBytes? In which case, pretty much any USB key from the last 2-3 years would fit it without issue. So just backup, copy the file to the USB, then restore on the other computer! (Just don't wipe the laptop before you do, just in case )

[richierich]

The backup file is 320,000kbs 

I'm guessing you mean 320 MegaBytes? In which case, pretty much any USB key from the last 2-3 years would fit it without issue. So just backup, copy the file to the USB, then restore on the other computer! (Just don't wipe the laptop before you do, just in case )

No I got it wrong      I looked at headshots file 

The backup file is actually 5,459,359kb

[RossRoy]

The backup file is 320,000kbs 

I'm guessing you mean 320 MegaBytes? In which case, pretty much any USB key from the last 2-3 years would fit it without issue. So just backup, copy the file to the USB, then restore on the other computer! (Just don't wipe the laptop before you do, just in case )

No I got it wrong      I looked at headshots file 

The backup file is actually 5,459,359kb

5GB?? Wow..

Well, if push comes to shove, you could always use something like 7-zip.org to split the file in manageable parts

[Halo2]

The dban file Sébastien provided sounds like it will wipe the whole drive, including the OS. Is that what you want to do? I read your statement, "Lastly, a lot of personal data and 'history' is on my current laptop, I'd prefer this to be wiped 100% without a reformat, ie I don't trust the IT guy to do this without 'peeking'. Is there a way i can do this?", to mean that you wanted your history wiped out, but the OS left intact. If that is what you want to do instead of wiping out the whole drive, log on as the local administrator, right click on My Computer and select properties. Select the Advanced tab and select User Profiles/Settings. Depending on how your computer is set up and how you log on, you will see a list of profiles that are on the computer. You want to select the one you use to log on with, either computer name/user name or domain/alias. Then select Delete and the profile will be deleted from the drive. You cannot delete the profile you are currently logged on with, that's why you need to log on as the local administrator. It is not securely erased, but it would take a lot of work to restore some of the data and would probably be too time consuming for the IT guy if he just wanted to 'peek' at your data.

Hope this is helpful without being too confusing. If I misunderstood what you were asking, please disregard and use the dban program to scrub your drive prior to giving it to IT.

Yes Halo you have it right, I wish to delete history without impacting the OS.
Not sure if I can sign-on as anyone but myself, I certainly can't do it as administrator, that is the IT guy.

Do you have admin rights when you logon, can you install programs? If you do and don't know the password for the administrator account, I can step you through changing the password to something you know or creating a local account to logon to. Let me know, as I would prefer answering from home where I'll be in front of a machine running XP rather than Vista or Windows 7.

[richierich]

Do you have admin rights when you logon, can you install programs? If you do and don't know the password for the administrator account, I can step you through changing the password to something you know or creating a local account to logon to. Let me know, as I would prefer answering from home where I'll be in front of a machine running XP rather than Vista or Windows 7.

Yes, I can install programs, but I don't know the password of Administrator account. Can we establish a local account to log on to?