Disposing Old Laptops

SharkyGeorge

Apologies if this has been posted previously/elsewhere.

What's the best way to get rid of old laptops?

I'm aware its necesary to take out the hard drive (sensitive info etc) and is there a way of getting rid of this safely too or do you need to keep it forever?

Also, is all sensitive info (particularly financial) stored only on the hard drive or on the actual compy as well? That is, even if I take out the hard drive is there any way someone could recover all the card numbers I'd ever typed in off of the rest of the laptop? (I don't even know whether this is possible - as you can see I'm not particularly comp-savvy).

Finally, where are good, safe places to recycle old compys? (And, even better, is there a way to make £££ off of old parts).

Sorry for lengthy post!

Thanks,

Sharky

Conor_3

NOOOOOO....
Don't throw an old laptop away. As long as it's working, there's always someone who'll want it and actually if it's a Pentium 3 class or later, there's usually someone who'll want it for spares if it is defective. Use a free hard drive wiping tool to destroy the data on it and then if you've got the original discs, re-install the software on it.
For selling it, try Ebay - old clunkers seem to fetch within £100 of new budget ones for some reason.

custardy

as said dont destroy them.if you really dont want them charity shop,freecycle etc but they will sell

SharkyGeorge

Thank you!

One is totally dead though - has been looked at by comp. fixer etc and says it can't be fixed at all (it literally doesn't even switch on anymore, so I couldn't even put a hard drive wiping tool on it). Any advice on what to do with that one?

The other one just has a costly porblem (making it cheaper to buy a new one, unfortunatel).

Where could I get this free cd from, btw?

SharkyGeorge

custardy wrote: »

as said dont destroy them.if you really dont want them charity shop,freecycle etc but they will sell

Problem with selling is I'm concerned people will be able to get data off it. Also, one is totally dead, doesn't switch on anymore etc

Nikolai

AS Conor said, use one of the free wiping tools which will overwrite the disk many, many times and make the data impossible to retrieve.
One well known one is DBAN see here

wakandem

the lappy that doesn't turn on - take the drive out and hammer it. Sell the rest spares or repair. Most old laptops sell just so pple can get the screen. Use dban to wipe other drives and then reinstall the os

unrich

If you can keep the caddy that the hard drive sits in (if it has one).
They often get thrown out with the HDD.
The caddies for my Compaq laptops go for anything up to £20.

albertross_2

buy an 2.5" usb caddy, and use the drives as a backup drive.

ormus

just install the old hdd into any PC (as a 2nd hdd) then wipe it with dban. the install it back into the dead laptop.
sell them all on ebay. peeps pay decent money for any lappy for the spares.
or freecycle them.