Advice on recycling old phones/laptops, won't turn on but want to ensure that data can't be restored

PHK

With regard to the phones, unless they are very old* then the storage is encrypted so even if someone could access the storage chips then they’d need the passcode/password to be able to decrypt the data. 

*running less than Android 5 (2014) or iOS 4 (2010) or lower. 

The drive from a laptop can be removed and placed into a cradle or adapter to connect to a PC via USB. As the drives are likely not worth anything a good whack with a hammer will do the job and then put in e-waste at the tip/recycling centre. 

GDB2222

bob2302 said:

GDB2222 said:

In practice, hard disks have grown so rapidly in size that old ones are completely valueless - at least they are by the time I am ready to throw them out. So, wiping them has seemed a pointless exercise. 

You wipe them so you know for sure that they wont be read after you get rid of them - it not specific to selling.

FWIW the pace of development for magnetic hard drives is very slow and has been for a long time. Cex are still selling second-hand drive in sizes I haven't used in twenty years.

I’m saying that there’s no need to wipe them before you thoroughly disable them with a club hammer. 

GDB2222

GDB2222 said:

bob2302 said:

GDB2222 said:

In practice, hard disks have grown so rapidly in size that old ones are completely valueless - at least they are by the time I am ready to throw them out. So, wiping them has seemed a pointless exercise. 

You wipe them so you know for sure that they wont be read after you get rid of them - it not specific to selling.

FWIW the pace of development for magnetic hard drives is very slow and has been for a long time. Cex are still selling second-hand drive in sizes I haven't used in twenty years.

I’m saying that there’s no need to wipe them before you thoroughly disable them with a club hammer. 

I had a look on CEX, but they didn’t seem to be offering to buy 30GB drives?

IvanOpinion

If I see one of my team members in a bad mood I usually give them an old computer and the baseball bat and tell them to go outside and vent their frustration. It is incredibly therapeutic.

bob2302

GDB2222 said:

I’m saying that there’s no need to wipe them before you thoroughly disable them with a club hammer. 

It depends on what you need to do. If you just want to stop someone casually reading the drive you can break the PCB, or simply pull-out the ribbon cable with your finger. If you need to make sure the drive is unreadable you need to break the platters, which means fully breaking-open the case. 3.5" drives look pretty tough to me, but I've never tried.

Wiping a drive may take a few hours of  background computer time, but I can start it off in less time than it takes to put my shoes on.

However, if you have a working drive, why ruin it? I'd use it for back-ups. 

Newcad

GDB2222 said:I had a look on CEX, but they didn’t seem to be offering to buy 30GB drives?

i recently bought 3x Kingston 128GB sticks off Amazon for under a tenner.

I/you can get 250GB SSDs for less than £20.

Why would I (or anyone else) want an old 30GB spinner?

PS. I do actually have one, it's a 32GB IDE HDD drive out of an old Acer laptop now in a USB enclosure, TBH I don't know why I still keep it apart from it's the only IDE drive I still have?

Undervalued

TC77 said:

Thank you everyone, I'll contact the charity but am I right that if I can't turn on the laptop I can't wipe it?  I assume I can take it out and destroy as people suggest and pass on the rest of it.

Yes, that is the only really safe option. Anything else relies on a third party doing what they promise and only you can decide if you are willing to trust them!

bob2302

Undervalued said:

TC77 said:

Thank you everyone, I'll contact the charity but am I right that if I can't turn on the laptop I can't wipe it?  I assume I can take it out and destroy as people suggest and pass on the rest of it.

Yes, that is the only really safe option. Anything else relies on a third party doing what they promise and only you can decide if you are willing to trust them!

Not if you have access to another computer with a dock, adapter or spare internal connector

EnPointe

TC77 said:

Hi, 
I've a no of old phones (mine and family) which are broken so can't do a factory reset and wary of recycling and potentially someone being able to restore sensitive data. Is there anything I can do about this or ideas on what to do?  I know some parts can be recycled/reused.

The same applies to old laptops?

I also have a couple of wireless keyboards (almost unused) but don't have the dongle thing so can't be uses - can these be recycled by anyone?

Hoping these aren't daft questions, but unsure what to do . Many thanks,

laptop is easy , open the case pull the hard drive 

slightly harder with phones built in / soldered on memory chips 

Newcad

EnPointe said:

Slightly harder with phones built in / soldered on memory chips

Google/Bing/whatever "will it blend" nobody is going to recover any data.
Of course it's not going to be reusable but the precious metals could be recovered.