Electronics

[glb613]

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@jackthebear wrote:

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@glb613 wrote:

There is no reason to smash the hard drive.  Buy an external enclosure and use it for storage. 

You can, but if you don't want old old computer stuff hanging around, destroyed HD is useless 

our town picks up old electronic during the year so I get rid of it then 

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What old computer stuff?  I save the data I want, format the old drive and use it for storage. 

There are programs to wipe the drive.  The one I use is WipeDrive.  You can select the number of over writes you want.  I've used this progrm when I sell an old computer.  It works great. 

[Mindy D]

Isn't there a program that wipes the computer?

[Frosted Cake]

Check with the city where you live.    Many times they have electronic drop off's every few months.  They have them where I live and also have a drop off day for old medicines.

[gardenman]

The absolute safest way to protect your data is to remove the hard drive of any computer you're getting rid of. In the case of a desktop computer you can typically add that hard drive to your new desktop for additional storage. You just have to slide it into a hard drive bay, there's typically one or more available, secure it, connect a cable from the power supply and then plug it into a SATA port on the motherboard.

Laptops don't generally give you that option, so just removing it is best. You can then destroy it, or put it someplace safe. 

The wiping programs are typically quite effective as long as you don't have anything incredibly valuable on the hard drive. I've seen reports of experts being able to get data from a hard drive that had been overwritten a hundred times, so they aren't perfect. 

If the computer you're getting rid of is a desktop and you're getting a new desktop, then salvaging some components from the old desktop to keep around as spare parts makes sense. Optical drives, hard drives, power supplies, case fans, etc., are all pretty easy to remove and pop in a drawer/closet for future use if necessary. In fact so much of a computer is reusable that you could just swap out the motherboard, memory, CPU and operating system and have an essentially new computer. I think a computer store that specialized in doing just that could do fairly well. (I'd call it "New Innards" if I opened such a store.)

As to cell phones, most of the personal data is stored on the SIM card. If you pull that, many smartphones lose all of your personal data. If in doubt, then pop it in an old pillowcase and beat it to death with a sledgehammer. Once sufficiently smashed, (I believe Tom Brady drove over his phones to smash them) you might want to then add the smashed remains to a fire to ensure the memory chips are well and truly destroyed. There's nothing quite like the smell of memory chips roasting by an open fire. If you melt everything together, the odds of anyone getting any data of any kind from a phone is impossibly slim.

In the real world, most of us are pretty darn safe no matter what we do as it's not worth the trouble for people to go to extremes to retrieve our data. If you're well to do, have one or more stalkers, engage in illicit/criminal behavior on your computer, are famous, etc., then you want to take extreme precautions. But for most people anything you do will likely be enough, because we're just not worth the trouble. There are easier ways to scam people.

[Yardlie]

I went to you tube and found videos on how to take the hard drive out of your computer and destroy it. In our community, we have to pay to dispose of electronics. In most communities, you can get information either from your waste disposal company or city hall.

We just had a free electronics disposal day on Earth Day, and wouldn't you know...I didn't hear about it. We have several old tvs and a couple computers to dispose of. It costs about $25 for each tv disposal where I live.

[151949]

I sent my chromebook in for repairs and it was not fixable. The warranty company sent me a check and said the computer would be crushed so it would not be returned. I felt crushing seemed adequate to keep my info that may be on it safe.

[gardenman]

I suspect the solid state drives on a Chromebook would be harder, maybe impossible, to read if overwritten. To read conventional hard drives, they'll often remove the platters to examine them. A solid state drive can't really be taken apart. I'm guessing a simple over-writing of a solid state drive would clear the data adequately.