Being given a work computer with no hard dreive - worth it?

isofa

It's shocking (hopefully not literally).

I too see thousands of pounds worth of gear scrapped from my clients every year, however they are getting much better with education.

Personally I think it's just a quick response to save any potential hassles, from essentially lazy companies, that aren't interested in: recycling, charity or the environment.

Bill, I'd suggest talking to their IT director about selling on for charity, with express disclaimers regarding no comeback, owner takes full responsibility etc. Those sorts of servers are very expensive to throw away.

There is a big list of companies and charities which either sell or request old PCs here: http://www.itforcharities.co.uk/pcs.htm

And a popular Donate a PC site: http://www.donateapc.org.uk/

BigChris45

The company I work for keeps PC's until they are dead lol. Some poor suckers still have 486 windows 98.

culpepper

OH broke his hand 10 years ago and the hospital where he had his physio was running their software on BBC model B computers.

His company get around the problem of being sued by the employees by putting the computers ready for the refuse collection. The employee who is going to have it,must tell everyone he wants it and put a sticker on it saying so , then go and get it from the rubbish room when he goes home.

London Diva 4gb is a lot of memory. Is it a 64bit machine? If so I believe you would need 64bit windows to be able to access the whole 4gb.
Im sure someone in the know could clarify.

LondonDiva

have finally got round to taking the computer home & looking to buy a SATA hard drive.

I was looking on PC world and the 3.5" hard drives seem to be what I need (I thought I'd go mad and get 500gb), only I've now spotted a hard drive case for sale on the site.http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1545270485.1216590853@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccfkadeejekgjeecflgceggdhhmdgmj.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=652058&category_oid=

Help

*What do I need to be able to install the hard drive into the machine - just the hard drive or a case as well? Do I need SATA, SATA II or SATA 3/gb
*does anyone know of a decent place to pick up a rewrite drive?
*Is it better to have a cd/rw or a dvd/rw? Most I will be doing is copying & burning cds on the basis of the past few years home usage.
*I get 5% off at Currys & PC world, but would it be cheaper to go to a more specialist site?
thanks again to everyone for being so helpful:)

fwor

Even if your 'new' PC only supports SATA I (1.5 Gb/s) and not SATA II (which is the same as SATA 3GB/s), go for a SATA II as if you re-use it when the PC dies you'll get better performance.

Even accounting for your discount, you'll get a better price elsewhere, such as here:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146252

The Samsung drives are quiet and reliable, but it won't cost a lot more to get a Western Digital or Seagate from the same source.

No caddy or case needed - though you may find that you are missing the large-headed bolts (four required IIRC) that Dell use to clip the drive in place. Probably best to buy the drive and see what you need, then ask your IT dept friends for any bits that are missing!

Oh and get a DVD/CD rewriter (again ebuyer are cheap) as they are hardly any more expensive.