How to protect personal data when having Win 10 laptop repaired at a computer repair shop?

Question

I am thinking about taking my win 10 laptop to diagnose and fix a charging problem with my Win 10 laptop suspected mother board issue. How can I protect my personal data if I need to have it repaired without trying to erase all of it?? Is there a way to download my OS from drive and reset it to erase all my personal data then reinstall when I get it back? Clone ssd to another then reset installed one? Or any another ways to safely do this?

Appreciate any help

Answer 1

How can I protect my personal data if I need to have it repaired without trying to erase all of it??

Your solution is actually quite easy: Backup all your personal data to an external drive. (That's something we should all be doing in any case.) After your data is backed up, simply erase it from your computer. When your computer comes back from the repair place, restore your backed up data.

The easiest way to backup your personal data is to use commercial backup software, but you don't have time now to research, install and test new software. Instead, you can do this:

1- Make sure that all your personal data is stored in these folders:

C:\Users\your user account\Desktop

C:\Users\your user account\Documents

C:\Users\your user account\Downloads

C:\Users\your user account\Music

C:\Users\your user account\Pictures

C:\Users\your user account\Videos

This is actually how Windows was designed to be used.

2- Copy the contents of these folders to folders with similar names that you will create on an external USB drive.

3- Test a few copied files, selected at random, to make sure that they open and work properly. In particular, make sure that you made copies of your files and not shortcuts to the files.

Once you have finished making and testing copies of your files, you can safely erase the originals.

Incidentally, steps #2 and #3 are what commercial backup software does, only faster and more easily.

Answer 2

Hello, how are you?

My name is Paloma B., I am very happy to be able to try to help you in the best possible way.

This is an open community, whenever you need you can share the problem so that possible repairs are suggested.

Could you give more information about the problem, please?

What exactly happened to your Windows? it is not booting anymore?

What you can do is take the disk out of this computer and plug it into another computer as a secondary disk.

That way, you can access it from Windows Explorer to copy all files to a backup and keep them safe.

Even if you need to completely reinstall Windows, you will have saved the files elsewhere so you can safely return them to that computer.

Answer 3

Backing it up doesn't do this as I understand.

That's correct. However, erasing the data on your computer will work splendidly and can be done quickly. But you'll want to backup your data before you do that.

Thanks but step by step as to how to do this would be very helpful as am somewhat savy but not an expert in this procedure. Erase then reinstate?

Thank you.

David

Answer 4

Backing it up doesn't do this as I understand.

That's correct. However, erasing the data on your computer will work splendidly and can be done quickly. But you'll want to backup your data before you do that.

Answer 5

Hello, how are you?
My name is Paloma B., I am very happy to be able to try to help you in the best possible way.

This is an open community, whenever you need you can share the problem so that possible repairs are suggested.
Could you give more information about the problem, please?

What exactly happened to your Windows? it is not booting anymore?

What you can do is take the disk out of this computer and plug it into another computer as a secondary disk.

That way, you can access it from Windows Explorer to copy all files to a backup and keep them safe.

Even if you need to completely reinstall Windows, you will have saved the files elsewhere so you can safely return them to that computer.

Thanks for prompt reply. Problem is with new battery(s) not fully charging and charger works fine. Suspect charging system on board.

Wanted a way to make sure that all personal data is removed in a way that cannot be found on the laptop by tech at computer shop. Backing it up doesn't do this as I understand. OS and data is on internal ssd drive. Thought only way to completely erase data is to reset OS to original. Is there a way other than as I suggested?

Thank you.

David