What to do with old laptops?

Peter123

Peter123

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Looking to dispose without compromising personal data.
I can take to council recycling depot, but how do I wipe it clean?
 
Peter123 said:
Looking to dispose without compromising personal data.
I can take to council recycling depot, but how do I wipe it clean?
Click to expand...
Just two steps:

1. Take out the hard disk, get a USB to the disk type cable. Attach it as an external disk to another laptop and do a low level format. This takes some time. If you have time, do it twice.

This way the hd can be re used.

2. If you want to go government secret clean. Have the hard disk grounded to dust.

I guess my curiosity is, what was on them? ;)
 
I always reduce the HDD to scrap before disposing of them.
 
If you can boot the lappy from a linux live CD/DVD/memory stick, you can open a shell and use the command...
Code: 
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=16M count=3
...to triple nuke the entire disk.
Unless MI5 are looking for it, that'll be more than adequate to allow you to dispose of the lappy as a working unit, without the possibility of your data being recovered.
 
Peter123 said:
Thanks all.
Contain private financial stuff.
Click to expand...
I was only messing.
I expected home movies as the answer.

Other more fun option is fill it with interesting stuff from the web. Then bury it. Maybe in a thousand years they'll find it and think we where really interesting.

Lol
 
I would never dispose of a computer with a working hard drive - just in case.

So for me it's a lump hammer every time.
 
Radio Shack, Source Electronics or some such.
Why throw money away? They wipe it for free and pay you money.
 
Generally I put it in a draw to deal with later, yep you guessed it, I have loadskicking around ;).

I generally remove the hd but to be fair in this day and age most things can be found if you really try hard enough.
 
I gave the HD from my old desktop to my two grandsons aged 13 and 10 with my tool bag. They managed to take it apart and destroy it quite well. :)
 
Hammer. Make sure you smash the spindle AND the discs.
Quick format wont cut it. A surface scan would retrieve approx 80%. I've retrieved thousands of photos for customers who've accidentally re formatted.
 
Cockney said:
Hammer. Make sure you smash the spindle AND the discs.
Quick format wont cut it. A surface scan would retrieve approx 80%. I've retrieved thousands of photos for customers who've accidentally re formatted.
Click to expand...
A quick format wouldn't, but a low level format would. I've done this before to test. Didn't retrieve a 'bit' lol
 
Suvv said:
I gave the HD from my old desktop to my two grandsons aged 13 and 10 with my tool bag. They managed to take it apart and destroy it quite well. :)
Click to expand...
Speaking of which. I have a hard disc mounted in a picture frame at the other halfs place. They are quite impressive looking things inside.

If you do do it, make sure you seal it well. Even a spec of dust on the platter will annoy the hell out of you.
 
CrazeUK said:
A quick format wouldn't, but a low level format would. I've done this before to test. Didn't retrieve a 'bit' lol
Click to expand...
My apologies most people confuse the two and I thought you meant quick.
I didnt realise you knew what you realy meant. ;)
 
Are low level formats (writing the sector encoding to a track) even possible any more?
Windoze format gives you the quick option of just re-initialising the NTFS data structures, or doing that and scanning the disk for read errors.
*ix utils like dd just write data to the existing sectors at the disk/partition/file level, so they remove the high level formatting info/content.
 
keef32 said:
Out of interest, how easy is this? Deleted some things off an old hard driver but wouldn't mind getting them back
Click to expand...
If the files weren't fragmented, and you haven't written anything else to the drive since the deletion, then the chances of recovery are excellent. The tools folks use for pulling stuff back off deleted memory cards would be a good place to start.
 
broc said:
I usually assault the HDD platters with an angle grinder ;)
Click to expand...
I guess there's a degree of satisfaction in that. Kill it with fire.gif
I recycle the platters as indestructible handbag mirrors, and pass them out to friends. (They're more resilient than old CDs for garden bird scarers too.)
 
keef32 said:
Out of interest, how easy is this? Deleted some things off an old hard driver but wouldn't mind getting them back
Click to expand...
There are several free recovery software programmes, Like Recuva. Whatever one you choose you should get a window asking what you want to do. Choose the drive your photos or documents were on. Select what you want the software to scan for eg jpg or docx etc. It will do a surface scan, scanning the whole drive. As already said some will be corrupted. Those that aren't, the software will find. It will take a long time and please note it may find photos you deleted some time ago, whatever they are. Assuming you're scanning your c drive from your c drive you will need an alternative place (usb drive?) to save the recovered data to. If you're searching for photos it will find a lot, including all the small icons that the system and other programmes use. To sift the results I list them by size order which gives you an indication of where the real photos begin. Happy hunting.
Brian
 
Tori_T said:
If the files weren't fragmented, and you haven't written anything else to the drive since the deletion, then the chances of recovery are excellent. The tools folks use for pulling stuff back off deleted memory cards would be a good place to start.
Click to expand...
Cockney said:
There are several free recovery software programmes, Like Recuva. Whatever one you choose you should get a window asking what you want to do. Choose the drive your photos or documents were on. Select what you want the software to scan for eg jpg or docx etc. It will do a surface scan, scanning the whole drive. As already said some will be corrupted. Those that aren't, the software will find. It will take a long time and please note it may find photos you deleted some time ago, whatever they are. Assuming you're scanning your c drive from your c drive you will need an alternative place (usb drive?) to save the recovered data to. If you're searching for photos it will find a lot, including all the small icons that the system and other programmes use. To sift the results I list them by size order which gives you an indication of where the real photos begin. Happy hunting.
Brian
Click to expand...


Cheers!

It is some old photos. It's hard drives from my laptops from when I was younger, loads of old school photos etc.
 
Have these been reformated
keef32 said:
Cheers!

It is some old photos. It's hard drives from my laptops from when I was younger, loads of old school photos etc.
Click to expand...
Have they been reformatted and the photos "lost"?
Or are you just trying to get the photos off of the old drives?
 
Cockney said:
Have these been reformated Have they been reformatted and the photos "lost"?
Or are you just trying to get the photos off of the old drives?
Click to expand...

Not reformatted. I cleared just deleted things off them before I took them out of the laptops to use as external drives but not had to use them yet.
 
keef32 said:
Not reformatted. I cleared just deleted things off them before I took them out of the laptops to use as external drives but not had to use them yet.
Click to expand...
Ok fine. Try what I suggested.
Brian
 
Downloand DBAN from https://dban.org - over writes every bit on a drive multiple times.

Doesn't work with an SSD ... if you know the brand of SSD; the manufacturer will likely have a secure erase utility you can download. Otherwise parted magic is downloadable Linux distribution toolkit including secure erase for SSD https://partedmagic.com
 
Take screws off HDD, Open - hit with hammer. Sell rest of laptop, people will buy even old £10 - £20 laptops amazingly
 
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