Best way to dispose of end-of-life computers?

[d000hg]

I have my past 2 retired computers still knocking around. One is a Compaq desktop and most recently I replaced my 2012 Mac Mini. Both run AFAIK and the Mac is not half bad but has some hardware glitches causing it to crash every now and then.

I want to get shot of them and I'm not sure what the best option is. I need to consider data privacy and I don't like to contribute to landfill more than I have to, but I don't want to spend a lot of time reformatting and so on.

Any ideas? I had considered a local charity but I don't want to give them the hard drives and in the case of the Mac, I don't really want to spend the time taking it apart to get the disk out and put it back together.

[malvolio]

I wiped and stripped the disks out of mine and took the PCs to the local recycling centre. The disks are parked in a cupboard(and have been for some time now!) but will get crushed when I have enough to make it worthwhile. Or they are old enough for anything on them not to matter.

Most of my real data is on a NAS, so there isn't that much on the originals anyway

There are charities that will recycle old PCs. They would prefer at least one disk to be in there.

[WTFH]

If you don't want to give them the hard drives, then your best bet is to give them to a computer repair shop. The main things of use to someone who wants a computer is storage and operating system. If it doesn't have an OS on it, it will either end up only being used by a Linux fan, or someone will have to shell out £60 for W10.

For me, I'd wipe the drive, reformat it and run a Gutmann algorithm, such as this one:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gutmannmethod/

If the Compaq is running Windows 10, take a look at Method 2 here:
https://www.ubackup.com/windows-10/c...s-10-1021.html

[ladymuck]

https://theairambulanceservice.org.u...rs-to-charity/

[d000hg]

There are charities that will recycle old PCs. They would prefer at least one disk to be in there.

This would tick all the boxes but raises the question of trust. Not so much the fear someone at the charity would be up to no good, but do I trust them to know what they're doing when it comes to wiping, etc.
ladymuck 's option is a good one on that score I guess.

[malvolio]

This would tick all the boxes but raises the question of trust. Not so much the fear someone at the charity would be up to no good, but do I trust them to know what they're doing when it comes to wiping, etc.
ladymuck 's option is a good one on that score I guess.

Ah, I forgot one option...

I have a bunch of cables and power supplies to plug a SATA disk in to a USB port (mainly so I could get back stuff I had forgotten on the old disks). It would be fairly simple to do a full re-format with them - although it would probably take all night! GCHQ (and a firm I know of in Cardiff*) could probably retrieve the data, but for 99.99% of potential purchasers that is probably not possible.



*Not sure if they are still there but I have known them get a full restore of a disk that had been in a fire and had a building fall on top of it and the racking in which it was installed...

[Lance]

just fully encrypt the disks with whatever the OS of choice has. If Windows use Bitlocker. And the Mac has a full disk encryption built in.
That will render the information beyond recovery to anyone without the ability to tell what the data blocks used to have stored before they were overwritten.

[malvolio]

just fully encrypt the disks with whatever the OS of choice has. If Windows use Bitlocker. And the Mac has a full disk encryption built in.
That will render the information beyond recovery to anyone without the ability to tell what the data blocks used to have stored before they were overwritten.

Not strictly true, there are plenty of people with the tools and knowledge to break any encryption, given time and compute power. Whether the recipient of a third hand laptop would come under that heading is a little unlikely.

[Lance]

Not strictly true, there are plenty of people with the tools and knowledge to break any encryption, given time and compute power. Whether the recipient of a third hand laptop would come under that heading is a little unlikely.

True. With many millions of pounds, and a few hundred years, my AES-256 encrypted hard disk can be decrypted.
if someone wants my information that badly it would, far more cost effective to have me kidnapped and tortured (it wouldn’t take much torture either). The point of encryption is about making it too expensive to crack nor making it impossible to crack.