I’m moving soon and must downsize a bunch. I have three old Macs from way back. A Performa and something even older LCIII, maybe, does that sound familiar> I also have four old laptops, a Toshiba, two Gateways, and a Dell. I’m not sure if any of them will even boot up, assuming I can find their power supplies
What’s the best way of disposing of them? I’m guessing that no one wants them? And there is probably some kind of sensitive data on them as I’ve owned all the laptops since I’ve lived at this address with this bank account, etc.
I could put them in the driveway and drive over them with my car and bury the pieces. (I live in the country-- no zoning here. ) That might be satisfying.
This question has probably been asked before, so feel free to link me to an old thread.
It’s trivially easy to take the hard drives out of the Macs and smash then with a hammer. Make sure the top is seriously dented. Then, the rest of the electronics can be donated or recycled.
The laptops my be a little more difficult, but the same principle applies - destroy the hard drive, while saving everything else. The laptops are probably worth a few bucks on ebay.
depending on where you live electronic and computer stores will recycle what they sell. they may do so for free or a small fee.
there are also organizations which refurbish and reuse old computers and get them placed with schools or individuals, this can be local and international groups. the ones i’ve worked with formatted the computers with a new operating system, erasing the old data. most easily worked with are desktops and those could be used for parts.
In my area, it’s a group called ARC Broward. They carefully remove useful components, separate hazardous pieces, etc. And they do it as a training program - people can learn skills that translate to other jobs.
I’ve always just pulled the hard drive out and drilled a hole through it. After that, dispose of it however you see fit, but no one is going to pull that data off of it at that point.
Yes, I know, the KGB might still swoop in and use their super secret recovery tools to extract your banking information because you didn’t write over the drive six times with 0’s then 1’s then random digits then format it again…but I don’t think anyone wants my data that badly. I’m just trying to protect myself from that random person that finds a free laptop/desktop. They can have it, but they can buy a new hard drive for it.
I use DBAN for wiping the hard drives of computers I need to dispose. The only problem I have with it is that, as far as I know, it can only wipe the primary drive (i.e., the boot drive) on the computer. That means that it can’t wipe an external drive, or a secondary drive on the system.
In my experience, many people don’t know how to properly dispose of computers, judging from the number I find by the curb (admittedly, I think this is a good thing since I take them and strip them for their electronics), including with intact hard drives, data and everything, or a half-hearted attempt to delete all data, although I’ll occasionally find one that has a drill hole in it or has been wiped (if there is a drive at all, as is the case maybe 4 times out of 5; just the other day I found an external drive that had obvious signs of an attempt to open it (the enclosure, not the drive itself), the drive was still good).