Selling an old laptop

retiredandskint

I've an old laptop that I want to sell and although it is in working condition the 'socket' that the lead goes into is broken and therefore doesn't charge up. For someone who knows what they're doing I'm sure it can be repaired.

My question is should I

a) pay to get the hard disc wiped and hope i get my money back
b) sell without the hard drive; or
c) sell without but offer for the cost of getting the hard drive wiped getting it done and sending when complete.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.

Crowqueen

Spend money to make money. You won't get much for it without a hard-drive.

Incidentally, this happened to my Toshiba laptop about 18 months ago. It would cost around £100 to fix - I got it done free because it was a 'known issue' with the machine.

oscarward

What make of laptop is it? I had an old Toshiba with that problem, the power connector is just a plug in to the mother board so peanuts to repair but on some designs, like my current HP, it is soldered in so cost £80 to repair.

May make sense to repair it. For my Tosh I bought a spares / repair model from Ebay for £14 (no memory or HD) and cannibalised it.

Think Ebay classify as spares if incomplete and as such it may prove difficult to sell as working without a HD so the value will drop.

retiredandskint

Thanks Crowqueen and oscarward. I'll get a price on getting it wiped. The laptop is a Toshiba.

richardlionheart

What do people charge to get the hard disk wiped ?

an alternative would be to replace the operating system with a cheap
linux operating system ( this would wipe the existing hard drive in the process which i guessing is windows )

there are free linux o/s that can be downloaded or
i recommend a version from
http://linux-man.co.uk/shop/

go for a 32bit system incase the laptop cannot handle 64bit
something like Freespire 1.0 £3.99
with option to run "live" off disk to make sure laptops
hardware will all run ok , then easy install.

this way when you sell it you can say it has a installed
open source o/s with internet and other multimedia etc

hope this is of help

cheers
Rich

oscarward

retiredandskint wrote: »

Thanks Crowqueen and oscarward. I'll get a price on getting it wiped. The laptop is a Toshiba.

If you have access to another computer look for a drive caddy on ebay/ clas olhsen/whatever . Presuming the mains supply is fubar and the battery is dead you can take the HD out, load in to a caddy and then plug in to another machine and wipe it. About £20-30 for a caddy , cheaper than paying professional prices.

This is a useful web site for taking a tosh apart if it is the same model as mine.

http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/Toshiba-Satellite-L35/taking-apart-laptop-1.htm