Prepare Pinebook Pro for Sale

[GFreeman]

Hello,

I've decided to sell my Pinebook Pro. It's a great machine, but I don't use it. Perhaps someone else can use it.

I'm still a real noob with Linux, so I'm not sure how best to prepare it for sale and wipe it. It's running Debian because I couldn't get it to login in when I first bought it, so I flashed Debian onto it instead.

If anyone has any suggestions about how I could easily wipe it of personal information to prepare it for sale, I'd be grateful.

Best,

Graham

[jiyong]

Depends on how thorough/paranoid you want to do it.
You can flash it again and fill up the remaining space with random files.

You can use videos from Blender (copyright free) and keep copying them until your drive is (close to) full.
But it is better to leave several MB free, as you might run into problems with log files.
https://4kmedia.org/big-buck-bunny-4k-demo/

Or you can boot from a micro SD card and format the eMMC (not a quick format) and flash the eMMC again.
And when you feel like it, you can fill up the remaining space with random files.

In ultimate paranoid mode, you sell it without the eMMC.

[GFreeman]

Depends on how thorough/paranoid you want to do it.
You can flash it again and fill up the remaining space with random files.

You can use videos from Blender (copyright free) and keep copying them until your drive is (close to) full.
But it is better to leave several MB free, as you might run into problems with log files.
https://4kmedia.org/big-buck-bunny-4k-demo/

Or you can boot from a micro SD card and format the eMMC (not a quick format) and flash the eMMC again.
And when you feel like it, you can fill up the remaining space with random files.

In ultimate paranoid mode, you sell it without the eMMC.

Hello,

This is great. Thank you very much.

As a follow-up question, how would I go about ultimate paranoid mode and sell it without the eMMC?

Best,

Graham

[wdt]

I don't know if you have fstrim installed.........(I think in fsutils maybe)
If you do cd /; fstrim -v /,,,,, sometimes it takes 30 sec before the prompt comes back
What do you think it is doing in that 30 sec? *
Do it twice, sometimes the 2nd time has still a little to do (will take maybe 3-5 sec)
And if you do it a 3rd time, it is instant
(remember, up arrow recalls previous commands)
And obviously, if /home is a separate partition, do it on that partition
*it is erasing every block that it can, making the sectors ready for writing,
I don't think it is doing any garbage collection though, so there might be some data left
Recovery of erased data on flash is rather hard, just how valuable is your data?

[jiyong]

Hello,

This is great. Thank you very much.

As a follow-up question, how would I go about ultimate paranoid mode and sell it without the eMMC?

Best,

Graham

You have to open the Pinebook Pro and remove the eMMC.
When you sell the Pinebook Pro, clearly state it will be without the eMMC.

One other option is to buy another eMMC and replace it.

[GFreeman]

All,

Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Best,

[allenlin0311]

The machine is still for sell?

[kylexd]

Interested if it’s still available

[commiecam]

Depends on how thorough/paranoid you want to do it.
You can flash it again and fill up the remaining space with random files.

You can use videos from Blender (copyright free) and keep copying them until your drive is (close to) full.
But it is better to leave several MB free, as you might run into problems with log files.
https://4kmedia.org/big-buck-bunny-4k-demo/

Or you can boot from a micro SD card and format the eMMC (not a quick format) and flash the eMMC again.
And when you feel like it, you can fill up the remaining space with random files.

In ultimate paranoid mode, you sell it without the eMMC.

Quick and dirty, but more than effective enough:

Log in as root or at prompt:  su-   followed by root password when demanded.

You are now superuser and in /root directory
Now enter at prompt#  dd if=/dev/urandom of=/home bs=1M <enter>

The entire /home directory including all files and directory strucftures, and, incidentally,all unused space on the partition which houses /home will be overwritten with random characters.  Totally nuked.

[bonjovi]

Depends on how thorough/paranoid you want to do it.io games  
You can flash it again and fill up the remaining space with random files.

You can use videos from Blender (copyright free) and keep copying them until your drive is (close to) full.
But it is better to leave several MB free, as you might run into problems with log files.
https://4kmedia.org/big-buck-bunny-4k-demo/wordle website

Or you can boot from a micro SD card and format the eMMC (not a quick format) and flash the eMMC again.
And when you feel like it, you can fill up the remaining space with random files.

In ultimate paranoid mode, you sell it without the eMMC.

If you leave too much space, you might run into problems.