Old PC for sale or scrap - how to remove drive/personal info safely?

Goodadvice75

Hi,

Hope someone can advise. We have an old PC in the loft. Have fired it up and it is OK for Word and getting online but not superfast or up-to-date. It's a Packard Bell with just over 1GB memory. (If we can swap the memory to another PC we'd like to but are not sure if it is compatible - the old PC has "DDR PC2700, but the newer desktop uses "DDR PC-5300".)

Just wondering if there would be any value in selling this or its parts on ebay or similar, or if it just too ancient?

Whether selling or scrapping, how can we be sure that we wipe off all personal info safely? I know there are programs you can download - pls can anyone advice on the best (hopefully free or cheap!) program to do this?

Or is it better to remove the hard drive and if so how do we go about this?

Many thx in advance.

m5rcc

Remove the hard drive and take a hammer to it.

Sell the rest for parts or break it up and sell parts individually.

New HDs cost peanuts

pcombo

m5rcc wrote: »

Remove the hard drive and take a hammer to it.

Sell the rest for parts or break it up and sell parts individually.

New HDs cost peanuts

Why take a hammer to it lol.

why not just buy an enclosure and use it as spare or extra storage

Plus hammer wont destroy the data on the drive.

m5rcc

pcombo wrote: »

Why take a hammer to it lol.

why not just buy an enclosure and use it as spare or extra storage

Plus hammer wont destroy the data on the drive.

You could if you wish...enclosure might be worth more than the PC itself!

If you smash it to small pieces it would....

fwor

Don't smash the hard disk with a hammer - it may be of use to someone. Download and run DBAN and it will securely delete all of the data on it.

Whether to sell the bits is down to how much time you are prepared to devote to getting a few quid back. TBH, the effort involved in eBaying the bits would not be worth it to me.

If you need a second PC just for internet browsing and the like, it would be worth installing one of the Linux versions on it - it will probably be quite useable, as Linux tends to run better on old hardware than Windows.

If you don't need it, why not offer it on Freegle after you've wiped the hard disk?

Dave_C_2

Why not take the old hard drive out of your old machine and fit it as a second hard drive in your new PC, assuming that the new PC is a desktop. I use my second hard drive for backups.

For some checks to see if you can do it see here

You may wish to format the old hard drive first

HTH, Dave

PS don't use a hammer, take the hard drive to bits, scratch the platters and extract the super strong magnets (scroll down the page).

TakeThis

m5rcc wrote: »

You could if you wish...enclosure might be worth more than the PC itself!

If you smash it to small pieces it would....

Calm down...a SATA enclosure costs £9.40.
IDE enclosure £10.95

How is that ever going to be worth more than the PC?
You would not even be able to buy external HDD storage for that price.

Remember that people depend on us for technical advice. So if you are joking then you should make it clear.

White_Zenith

m5rcc wrote: »

Remove the hard drive and take a hammer to it.

Sell the rest for parts or break it up and sell parts individually.

New HDs cost peanuts

Not the best way, just zero fill the hard drive. Anyone with the funds and equipment to recover data from a zero fill would also likely be able to recover it from a physically smashed hard drive, as it's only specialists that can do this.

And new hard drives are actually really expensive the last few months or so unfortunately

Just zero fill the hard drive, and include it in the PC if you're selling it.

DVardysShadow

pcombo wrote: »

Plus hammer wont destroy the data on the drive.

If the drive is taken to the point where the disk is too distorted to spin, that will effectively destroy the data beyond it being worth anyone's effort

m5rcc

DVardysShadow wrote: »

If the drive is taken to the point where the disk is too distorted to spin, that will effectively destroy the data beyond it being worth anyone's effort

Absolutely...

forgotmyname

Except a specialist said you could shred a CD or disc platter into 1mm pieces and they could read the data on it.

Obviously thats not a cheap option But i remember CD writers costing £200+ for a single speed writer than took over an hour to burn a CD.

DVD writers for less than £20 now? Decent ones less than £30.

Probably budget devices out there somewhere.