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?

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.

poppellerant

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.

Take the hard drive out of the laptops, there are plenty of online guides or YouTube videos for the majority of laptops.  With the hard drives removed, you could invest in a cheap USB caddy or adapter for under £10 and plug this into an existing laptop or computer to erase the data.

I would recommend researching how to use DISKPART in Windows and using the CLEAN ALL command.  Even if you format a drive, the partition area will remain untouched for the majority of the time, leaving a potential weak area for somebody determined - the CLEAN ALL command does it what says and cleans the entire drive, including the partition area.