When you are ready to retire your old laptop you need to be sure you remove any critical personal data from it's hard drive. You should remove all passwords, financial data, e-mail messages and personal data. You never know where the hard drive will wind up and who might look at your valuable personal information.

The U.S. Department of Defense specification for sanitization of hard drives is DoD 5220-22M. You make multiple passes: the first pass inscribes ONEs, the next pass inscribes ZEROes, the third, fourth or more iterations write the government-designated code “246” across the drive. The goverment may actually run as many 8 passes, then inspect the drive with a Read-Verify review.

Overwriting data once is not usually good enough to prevent data recovery, it is recommended that a minimum of three passes are made so no data can be recovered.

Free programs that would sanitize your hard drive are: Darik's Boog and Nuke and Active Kill Disk.

When you get your refurbished laptop it is very possible the battery does not work. It could be that it is just old and worn out or it is possible that the charging system on the AC adapter is not charging the battery. If you go to control panel and bring up power options you can see if the battery is being charged. You can also see if the battery light is on or turns green after it has been plugged in overnight.

To get the most out of your battery you need to know the type of battery and proper charging and storage procedures. If you buy a new battery they typically only a one year warranty and the battery can only be recharged 400 or 500 times. You can expect that it will last only two to three years. Prices for new batteries range from $50 to $125 or more. You can find good deals for used ones that will hold a charge for an hour or more on www.ebay.com for $25 to $50+.