Recommission used laptop for another member of staff

[chrbb]

What do you all do when you change ownership of a staff laptop? We have a steady stream of pregnant staff leaving and then returning, I don't reimage laptops just take off ex teacher's documents, store them on an external hard drive, delprof their profile, copy returning member of staff's documents to laptop and issue.

But today I had to use recuva to retrieve a users favourites folder from their newly deleted profile and all their documents were recoverable. I'm now wondering if I should be more diligent in deleting data from laptops that other staff are taking over.

[nephilim]

Staff here are told to back up all data they want to keep....this includes favourites, documents, pictures etc....then we re-image the machine.

[Mr.Ben]

I re-image the machine entirely. Whilst this wouldn't stop something like PhotoRec recovering data I feel that that is enough.

In addition to this Staff can only save work to folders on the network, which are then synced with the laptop via offline files. The Offline Files Cache is encrypted.

After all, there should only be school information on the laptop . If it is a senior member of staff laptop then I replace the disk and store the original until we are sure that all of its contents are not needed (3 years)

[pete]

We backup their files (even if they say they've already done it) and (if we're feeling generous) use the USMT from Microsoft to backup up their preferences.

Then we reimage and re-encrypt the drive.

When they come back you can restore their files to a newly imaged laptop and their twiddly nice-to-have bits using USMT.

[chrbb]

I don't have imaging software so I suppose it would be a case of formating the drive and reinstalling windows and software. I've wondered if something like cc cleaner to write over the free space would suffice. I don't think for one moment that staff would be able to recover deleted profiles of other users some struggle to logon, but it's just for my peice of mind.

[pete]

I can't remember if you're based at a primary school or not?

The Windows XP License (or a Windows 7 License) gives you the rights to use WinPE. That on a bootable CD with sysprep and imagex (and Gimagex if you want a GUI) and a network share / usb drive for .wim files would allow you to create / restore basic images. With a bit of fiddling (Windows Automated Install Kit - also free) you can inject drivers and service packs etc.

[chrbb]

I think I'm just being neurotic after a stressful day! It should only be school stuff on the laptops and if a member of staff was determined to recover the previous owners data they'd do no matter what I do to the hard drive, except if I physically destroyed it. The deleted profile will be written over in time by the new owners data eventually, I think!

I don't use imaging, I'm in a primary school with not an emormous amount of computers, we buy equipment with oem windows then I have a script that installs most of my software, so actually doesn't take much time to set up new equipment at all.