PC world service - wiping old PC

angelicmandy

Hello,
i have a very old fashioned PC (large screen, tower etc). As it has not been used for so long & I have a laptop I want to get rid of it. I understand you need to be careful about your hardrive if getting rid of an old PC in respect of privacy/ID. Ive seen that PC world do a £30 service where they permantly erase files, protect your ID and recyle the pc. I was wondering if anyone has used this service or thinks it is actually safe & it would be ok from a privacy point of view. Im not very up on computers in as far as taking it apart myself & destroying the hardrive - I wouldnt know where to start - what does the hardrive even look like ?!

Many thanks

NiftyDigits

You can do it yourself in five minutes. Usually four screws on the side of the PC. The HDD is usually under the Optical drive(CD/DVD). Uscrew and unplug the HDD. Keep it. You can put it in an external caddy if you wish and use it as external storage.
You can put the PC on FreeCycle.

REALLY no need to pay for anything.

Toxteth_OGrady

NiftyDigits wrote: »

You can do it yourself in five minutes. Usually four screws on the side of the PC. The HDD is usually under the Optical drive(CD/DVD). Uscrew and unplug the HDD. Keep it. You can put it in an external caddy if you wish and use it as external storage.
You can put the PC on FreeCycle.

REALLY no need to pay for anything.

+ 1

:cool:

TOG

denwhatshisname

£30, what a joke!

You can take it to a recycler if you wish. If you're worried about the hard drive strip it to the disks, scratch the heck out of them and bin it.

I would never give a hard drive away, and always strip them. The disks tend to stink out microwave ovens, but the amount of sparks is amazing.

angelicmandy

When you explain how simple it is £30 does sound like a rip off. i will definitely have a go myself. So basically if I remove/destroy the hardrive, thats all I need to do & the rest of it is safe to get rid of ? great
thank you

Guardsman

Just hammer the life out of it it's great fun.

Figment

Yup, that's about the size of it.

Cisco001

Take out your hard drive and destroy it with hammer!!!

Or just run programme like killdisk

S0litaire

£30!! what a rip off...

I'd do it for a £10 or an 12 pack of Tenents lager... ^_^

denwhatshisname

You could just destroy the board and the pins on the drive and thats usually enough.

Get a torx screwdriver and unscrew it you find, usually, a couple of really shiny disks that smudge so easily, they make nice coffee mats, and 2 very strong magnets.
The rest, if its an old PC, can be taken to the local recycling centre (or tip as we used to call it).

We did microwave the disks once to see how effective it was, I wouldn't recommed it. Scratching them with a screwdriver does the job..

ubergeek

Another option would be to wipe the drive yourself using something like dban http://www.dban.org/