So, you have purchased the new digital devices and are planning to sell or give away the older ones. Whether you are selling your phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, or another digital device, you need to reset it to prepare it for its new owner.
4 Things You Need To Do Before Selling Your Digital Devices
Follow this checklist to ensure that the digital devices are ready to sell or give away.
1. Most Importantly, Backup Your Data
The world is moving to the digital, and hence we all have become accustomed to saving our entire data on our digital devices, preferably portable ones. Probably, the reason is that we want access to our personal data such as office documents or images, just instantly right from anywhere.
Before you wipe up your smart devices, make sure to backup your data. Data backups are important whether you are selling your device or not, as they will prevent you from losing data in the event of system failures, hardware breakdowns, or malware intrusions.
You can either backup data to any external storage media or move it to the Cloud. If you are transferring data to external media, you can pick any option among the hard drive, an SSD, or a USB. However, if you select Cloud backup, Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud, OneDrive can be the potential options.
2. Secondly, Clean Your Hard Drive
That’s a bit technical yet an important step that you need to take before you sell your computer or other digital devices. Wiping the hard drive is quite easier on modern devices, so you can erase the files while restoring the default operating system and settings.
Before you sell your computer, smartphone, or tablet, you need to clean the scratch disk and other drives that store temporary data.
This applies to Android devices, iPhones, iPods, Macs, MacBooks, Windows laptops, and PCs. If you have the latest computer with an SSD installed in it instead of a hard drive, wiping off data and erasing the drive is simple, and you can do it in a few simple steps.
Again, make sure and cross-check that you have a backup of all the data stored on the SSD. Once you erase the drive, particularly the solid-state drives, you are not able to recover anything. Please note that the data gets immediately deleted from the SSD when TRIM is enabled.
3. Time To Factory Reset Your Device
Sometimes, selling your phone, computer, tablet, or other digital devices and gadgets is painful. But you make this decision because these devices are of no use to you. When you have a copy of all the personal data stored on your computer, you can reset your device back to factory settings before you pass it on to another user or its new owner.
If your device is a couple of years old and not too aged, factory reset will reinstall the operating system, and the device will resurrect its new-like state. On Windows 11 and 10 computers, click Reset this PC option and then select Remove Everything to erase your data.
On a Mac running the latest macOS, go to Disk Utility, choose the startup disk, and then click on the Erase tab. Next, change the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) option and click Erase. Quit Disk Utility, and your digital devices are set to factory reset.
On an Android device, including a smartphone or tablet, you can use the Factory Reset option by navigating to Settings, then Backup and Reset, and then Factory Data Reset. On an iOS or iPadOS device, go to Settings, click General, tap Reset, and then select Erase All Content and Settings.
4. Lastly, Reinstall Operating System
Last but not least, an important step is to make your device ready to use for its new owner. Once you factory reset your digital devices and erase the startup drive, it’s time to reinstall the operating system. Try to reinstall the latest version of the OS (as much as you can).
In Windows computers, reinstall the operating system by navigating to the Reset this PC option which offers a cloud reset feature. It allows you to download the latest Windows version from Microsoft’s server. Alternatively, use local reset to reinstall the operating system from an already installed recovery image.
On a Mac computer, you may use the Recovery Mode to start reinstalling the macOS from scratch. Shut your Mac and restart it by pressing the Command + R keys. Select the Reinstall macOS option from the macOS utility window and click Continue. Reinstalling the macOS process will take some time; once it completes, the system will restart.
Conclusion:
Once you carefully follow all the steps mentioned above, your digital devices are all set to use for their new user. Keep in mind to store the external hard drive in some safe space so that you can quickly restore data to your new device without hassle. To prevent unauthorized access to data, make sure to password-protect the external storage media using a solid set of passwords.
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