question for computer brains!

On 1/15/2015 meowing kitty said: I would take the hard drive out of your old computer and destroy it. Sledgehammer works great for that. As for the rest of it I would say you could try to recycle it. No one will want it because of its age and since you destroyed the hard drive it no longer has an operating system so no one will want it. Our local city has a recycle event a couple times year where you can unload stuff like that.

Where is this hard drive??( yes I am a computer dummy...) I take all my old electronics to the Good Will where they recycle them for free. Thanks for your help!

On 1/15/2015 annabella said:

On 1/15/2015 meowing kitty said: I would take the hard drive out of your old computer and destroy it. Sledgehammer works great for that. As for the rest of it I would say you could try to recycle it. No one will want it because of its age and since you destroyed the hard drive it no longer has an operating system so no one will want it. Our local city has a recycle event a couple times year where you can unload stuff like that.

Where is this hard drive??( yes I am a computer dummy...) I take all my old electronics to the Good Will where they recycle them for free. Thanks for your help!

I'm with you there, Anna. My hard drive died with my new computer a few years ago and I took it to Staples to have the hard drive removed because I didn't know how or where it was. It was a laptop and it was located on the bottom of the computer and needed to be removed with screws, I believe. It was a lot smaller than I thought it would be.

On 1/15/2015 AnnaBella said:

On 1/15/2015 meowing kitty said: I would take the hard drive out of your old computer and destroy it. Sledgehammer works great for that. As for the rest of it I would say you could try to recycle it. No one will want it because of its age and since you destroyed the hard drive it no longer has an operating system so no one will want it. Our local city has a recycle event a couple times year where you can unload stuff like that.

Where is this hard drive??( yes I am a computer dummy...) I take all my old electronics to the Good Will where they recycle them for free. Thanks for your help!

Mr google can help with that.

Once you have the drive out, smash it or drill a hole through it.

On 1/15/2015 AnnaBella said:

I was thinking of getting a new HP computer... the one I have now is about 8 years old.. with windows 7 and I heard that they will no longer be updating windows 7 real soon... so I guess a new computer with windows 10 is in line.

You will be getting Windows 8.1 with a new computer. You should consider buying a new HP computer direct from the company or a place like Best Buy.

Windows 7 will be supported for a while longer yet. Microsoft just stopped supporting XP, and Vista will be next to lose support, then Windows 7 after that. You've probably got a while before you need to worry too much about support for the OS going away. Windows 10 will be coming out sometime in 2015, but being an early adopter of a new operating system is generally not a great idea.

When you are finally ready to get rid of the old computer removing and keeping the hard drive is a good piece of advice. There are programs that should erase everything on the hard drive, and assuming you're not a celebrity or fabulously wealthy you're probably pretty safe using one of them, However, ghosts of what's been on a hard drive can often be resurrected by specialists.

Back to Windows 10 again for a minute. I'm of the belief that the OS makers are a bit out of their mind for what they do these days. Operating systems now are enormous and try to do everything possible even if it's not necessary for the user. I'm a bigger fan of a stripped down, bare bones OS, that just runs the hardware and then let each programmer/app writer add the components they need for their software that will then go away when the software/app is closed. It's largely how Chromebooks work and they boot in seconds as opposed to minutes. There are fewer openings for malware/viruses also. It would require a massive change in strategy for a Microsoft to do that, but it should make the end users much happier.

On 1/15/2015 jackthebear said:

On 1/15/2015 AnnaBella said:

On 1/15/2015 meowing kitty said: I would take the hard drive out of your old computer and destroy it. Sledgehammer works great for that. As for the rest of it I would say you could try to recycle it. No one will want it because of its age and since you destroyed the hard drive it no longer has an operating system so no one will want it. Our local city has a recycle event a couple times year where you can unload stuff like that.

Where is this hard drive??( yes I am a computer dummy...) I take all my old electronics to the Good Will where they recycle them for free. Thanks for your help!

Mr google can help with that.

Once you have the drive out, smash it or drill a hole through it.

Yep, I agree with all of this. Destroy the hard drive and recycle the rest at Goodwill.

The hard drive is not located in the same place for every computer, so we can't tell you where it is - Google is your best bet. You can at least look for labeled images of a laptop hard drive to help locate it and identify it. Here is one example I found by searching for Inside a Laptop. You could also search for Replacing a laptop hard drive.

You can erase it with downloadable software and then recycle it. In the past I've taken mine to Best Buy to be recycled. They will actually drill a whole in the hard drive so that it's unusable. I asked them to show it to me so I could be sure that they had done it...LOL. They did, so now I take all my old electronics there for recycling. In the case of newer electronics, they now have a "buy back" kind of program where they will give you a gift card with a certain value based on the resale value of the item. Most of the stuff I give them is too old to qualify, but I'm glad to know that option exists.