If you are selling your video gaming console to someone you do not know or someone you don’t want to have your personal information, you will want to reset your console to factory conditions and wipe all your data from the hard-drive. Let’s see how to do it on the Sony PlayStation 4.
Here the video and after the step-by-step instructions. You need to remove the console from the online account as primary console and also you need to wipe all your data from the hard drive of the console, so you should initialize it and reset it to factory settings. A better idea is to overwrite the hard-drive to properly delete all the data.
The instructions are pretty similar also for Microsoft Xbox One and Nintendo Switch or any other video gaming console.
First thing, with the online account, you don’t need to backup your data anymore, but if you want to do it, you can:
- from the menu on your PS4 home page, go to Settings
- in the Settings menu, select System
- from System, scroll down and select Back Up and Restore
- and select Back Up PS4
You can use a USB memory-card or an external USB hard-drive to backup your data on physical support.
The real first thing you need to do is make sure that your PlayStation account is no longer linked to the system that you intend to sell. So, the console will not be your primary PS4 anymore, let’s do it:
- from the menu of your PS4 home page, go to Settings
- scroll down and select Account Management
- select Activate as Your Primary PS4
- from the Activate menu, choose Deactivate
In the end, you need to wipe all your data from the hard drive of your PS4 console. The easiest way to do it is to initialize the console and restore it to factory settings, so it will be like a brand new PS4. You can do it with these simple steps:
- from the menu of your PS4 home page, go to Settings
- scroll down and select Initialization
- then select Initialize PS4
- and select Full initialization
The Quick Initialization leave your data on the hard drive and a smart hacker can easily get it. The Full Initialization will take a few hours but it will make you sure that all your data is wiped from the hard drive because it will write sequences of ‘zero’ above it. The hard disk will be like a new one.
For the Microsoft Xbox One, you can go to the Settings > All Settings > System > Console info & updates > Reset console option and select Reset and remove everything.
For the Nintendo Switch, from the Menu go to System Settings > System > Formatting Options > Initialize Console > Next and select the RED Initialize button.
Hope you like this.
References and resources
- Sony Playstation 4 User’s Guide | Restore Default Settings – https://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps4/settings/restore_setting.html
- Microsoft Support | How to reset your console to factory defaults on Xbox One – https://beta.support.xbox.com/help/hardware-network/console/reset-console-to-factory-defaults
- Nintendo Switch Support | Restore Factory Settings – https://www.nintendo.com/help/switch-storage-and-data-management/restoring-factory-settings