Old laptops

bargainsgirl · ‎01-13-2012

What do you do with old laptops? I know they should be "cleared" but how does one do that? If you take to a recycle facility do they wipe it clean for you?

jackthebear · ‎03-11-2010

@bargainsgirl wrote:
What do you do with old laptops? I know they should be "cleared" but how does one do that? If you take to a recycle facility do they wipe it clean for you?

ask google/edge or your browser of choice

gizmogal · ‎05-09-2014

I take a screw driver and find the screws at the bottom and open it up.Then I rip oput the hard drive. Without the hard drive, it is safe to recycle. Destroy the hard drive by drowning it in the sink or bathtub, or running it over with your car to crush it. Then you can throw that part away.

Recycling centers do not "clear" the laptop. As long as the hard drive is not destroyed or removed, the laptop has your valuable data in it. Any computer shop can remove it for you for a small fee. It only takes a few minutes.

Some say a strong magnet will kill it by eerasing or nullifying the data, but that is not correct. Magnets are not thorough and any data that remains may be usable.

You can drown the entire laptop to ruin it, or you can run the whole thing over with the car to crush it instead of just the hard drive.

If you can find the way to set it back to factory settings, then that is also effective, but it is not always available, depending on the operating system of the laptop.

Hope I've helped.

LindaSal · ‎05-15-2014

My husband removes the hard drive and destroys it with a hammer. Then the rest of the computer goes to the electronic recycling center in our state.

Boxerdoglover · ‎03-24-2010

1. There are programs that will wipe it look for something that mentions DOD wipe.

2. Running over it with your car will NOT destroy the hard drive

3. Drill press works

4. Hammer works

5 drowning doesn't really work unless you wait until it corrodes

6. They are made to survive and even a hammer is a lot of energy.

I opt for the disk wipe software. Used it in the financial world and it WIPES.

x Hedge · ‎08-18-2016

@gizmogal wrote:
I take a screw driver and find the screws at the bottom and open it up.Then I rip oput the hard drive. Without the hard drive, it is safe to recycle. Destroy the hard drive by drowning it in the sink or bathtub, or running it over with your car to crush it. Then you can throw that part away.

Recycling centers do not "clear" the laptop. As long as the hard drive is not destroyed or removed, the laptop has your valuable data in it. Any computer shop can remove it for you for a small fee. It only takes a few minutes.

Some say a strong magnet will kill it by eerasing or nullifying the data, but that is not correct. Magnets are not thorough and any data that remains may be usable.

You can drown the entire laptop to ruin it, or you can run the whole thing over with the car to crush it instead of just the hard drive.

If you can find the way to set it back to factory settings, then that is also effective, but it is not always available, depending on the operating system of the laptop.

Hope I've helped.

Agreed! I've always favoured giving these items a long, fully submerged bath.

@bargainsgirl

A work experience:

phones, tablets, and laptops were donated to women's shelters. These were all supposedly reset & wiped clean by both the doners and a company hired to do the job.

The people who received the items were able to access all sorts of info still on the devices that no doner would want to share with others.

From that point on I knew everything had to be submerged, and then physically destroyed.

Good luck!

on the bay · ‎03-09-2010

I used my trusty hammer!

"If you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew. Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains? can you paint with all the colors of the wind?"

cindyNC · ‎08-01-2019

My understanding is that submerging a hard drive or using a magnet doesn't work any longer. You have to physically destroy the drive.....the car or hammer method

gardenman · ‎03-09-2010

A lot of more modern computers no longer use a conventional hard drive. SSD's and M.2 drives are rapidly replacing them. Apple has gotten very good at making it nearly impossible to replace/remove their "hard drives." The memory storage chips are soldered onto the motherboard. Unless you have a hot air station and lots of experience, those "hard drives" are there to stay.

Modern desktop computers like to hide hard drives. My new build has slots for two M.2 drives on the motherboard, both hidden under a cover and the case has slots for two SSDs behind the motherboard and up to four conventional hard drives in the power supply shroud. If you go in looking for a "hard drive" in the "normal" location, you'd be shocked to find the computer had none. It could very well have eight though. (Mine only has two M.2 drives though I may move the three old hard drives from my old computer over later.)

Finding "hard drives" in their various configurations these days and then knowing how to remove them is becoming more and more of a challenge. In some cases (many modern Apple products), you just can't remove them. They're there forever.

You're almost smarter to just set aside a shelf in a closet for obsolete electronics and forget they're there. After you're dead someone else can figure out what to do with them, but it won't matter to you as you'll be dead.

Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!