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What to do with old (some dead) laptops?

14 years ago

How can I safely dispose of old laptops? By safely, I mean both in terms of not letting any retrievable data get into the wrong hands - and safe in terms of the environment/recycling.

First, I have one dead Dell Latitute 600. This thing cost me $150 used - a couple of years ago. Two weeks ago it would not come on at all. Even trying another battery (a Dell travel adapter) - it just wouldn't start up. Should I just throw this away? recycle?

Then I have two very old laptops we haven't used in years. One is a bottom end Toshiba from maybe 1o years ago. Last time I tried using it (about 3 years ago), it was so slow it wasn't worth using. I know specs might matter - but it's so old - needed a network card plugged in to get wireless B. No wireless built in. The other old laptop is a Dell from probably 8 or 10 years ago. My husband has had two laptops since he last tried using that one. Again - no wireless.

The two that aren't dead yet might be of some value to some charity - but I'm worried about the data we have on there. And I'm not looking for a big project in terms of erasing data - just to pass on a used laptop that probably isn't worth $50.

So any ideas for disposal would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Lynn.

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Comments (4)

grandms
14 years ago
For the ones you are going to dispose of, I'd remove the hard drives and somehow destroy them (smash with a sledge hammer?). For the ones that might be donated, there are several free programs for overwriting any personal material. One is simply called Erase and does a good job. You can erase everything, including the OS or just your documents, pictures, and anything else personal.
mike_kaiser_gw
14 years ago
Anything more than a couple of years old is likely of dubious value even to charity and you might want to make a few calls (with the computer specs in hand) before driving over. For the really old or non-functioning ones, if you think there is anything of value on the hard drive, you can physically destroy it. Remove it from the computer and smash it with a hammer. Or if you know it's physical location you can drill right through the computer and drive.

For the newer machines, I'd use Book 'n Nuke. It will make data on the drive unrecoverable (unless you're angered the CIA or NSA)...

Here is a link that might be useful: Boot and Nuke
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genes
14 years ago
If either of the old slow ones have a cd drive...look into Puppy Linux as an operating system...its free, requires little resources and is fun to play with..I have it on a couple of old laptops..an old toshiba and an old IBM..
Pooh Bear
14 years ago
Depending on the specs I mite be interested in them.
Especially if they are free.

Pooh Bear

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