Safely disposing of old laptops

Weird_Nev

googler wrote: »

!!!!!!, WHY ???

Why destroy what may be a perfectly usable Hard Drive? Just take them out of the laptops and KEEP THEM.

Because governments, man, and NSA, and CIA, and GCHQ and the FBI! THey go out, at night, in the darkness, man, and sift through the landfill.... that drive with the £7 million bitcoin wallet, where do you think that went? TO THE GOVERNMENT.... they look thought, they want your photos and your data and your online passwords. They hook them up to racks man, RACKS! The get all your data... Then they use it... they use it AGAINST YOU..... You don't know man, I've seen it.


Or not.

Seriously, unless my hard drive had data on it that I could go to prison for, I honestly don't think I could take a hammer to it.

(And yes, that was a cue for conspiracy theorists "we could all be a political prisoner before you know it" post).

I have PGP, I will happily use it should the government change to some totalitarian regime which I feel the need to fight the good fight against, but until then, I don't think that anyone wants my holiday photos or CV enough to start doing bit by bit reconstruction of a hard drive platter.

Patchwork_Girl

Thank you all. I know I'm being a bit paranoid but I'm honestly not sure what is on all three of the machines - they were used for everyday stuff including banking, etc. I would much prefer to recycle/re-use if possible so I will look at removing the hard drives myself, or Google DBAN and do some learning, then pass them on to someone who might use them.

I suppose my main worry was than anyone with the know-how to make use of them would probably also know how to find my old data if hadn't dealt with it properly. Anyway, thanks!

adouglasmhor

Dban or CC cleaner, the stuff about being able to retrieve data from hard diks that have been wiped completely with secure wipe programs is years out of date and needed access to an electron microscope anyway.

NiftyDigits

Brand names and model numbers?