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Old computer disposal, public tip
sevenlayermuddle:
An elderly Aunt asked us to dispose of a quite old laptop computer. It had not been used for much, but would have contained the odd email, some banking and hmrc tax stuff, assorted usernames and passwords. I extracted the hard drive, unsrewed the cover to expose the drive’s internals and with a tap from a nearby brick, shattered the glass platter into many pieces. I then reassembled neatly and took it to the public tip.
As I prepared to toss it into the ‘small electrical items’ skip, a member of staff intercepted me. Apparently, they are meant to “destroy” computers, before they are tossed. He poised himself to give it a good battering with a lump hammer, aimed at the keyboard and screen. I declined, said it was not necessary, and tossed it anyway. He seemed surprised but accepted my choice.
Not sure what they hoped to achieve, by battering away at the keyboard and screen. No matter how hard he battered it, the HDD would almost certainly have survived. ???
Ronski:
Does seem odd, as you say they are unlikely to destroy the hard drive, and are actually making any recycling harder.
I much prefer to recycle, erase the hard drive, or if really concerned remove it and the give the rest away. I have often seen people asking for old computers on free cycle for computer clubs where they teach people how to repair etc. Mind you their motive could be to gain access to the data on unsuspecting peoples drives.
sevenlayermuddle:
The PSU had been lost, so I couldn’t even power it up. Else, I might have booted up linux and bzero’d the disk. Or I could have transplanted the disk into another system and bzero’d it there, but that was getting more like hard work.
It was a 12 year old machine, and I had to visit the tip anyway, so I decided to let it go. Glad I didn’t have to watch it getting smashed up with a big hammer though, that would have made me rather sad. Ok, I’d just trashed the disk platter with a brick, but I reassembled it neatly so you’d never have known, and it could land in the skip with a little bit of its dignity remaining. :D
Weaver:
I have always put hard disks into the stove. If the machine is going to be sold, I put back into it the very same virgin original physical unit that was in it when it arrived, which was removed and packed away when the machine was first delivered, before powering the machine up for the first time with a good empty hard disk of my own.
Bowdon:
As I was reading the thread I just had a thought :idea:
The more ssd's are becoming a thing, what would be the best way to destroy an ssd?
I know we could smash it, but would a powerful magnet to the same job to erase data?
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