Best way to get rid of Computer Stuff ?

jonbeeza

jonbeeza

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Just wondering what's the best way to get rid of old/broken Computers, Hard Drives, Phones etc? I have a couple of old laptops that are well past it, one will not start up anymore and the other does not have much life left in it. I know I can format the laptop, but I believe stuff still still stays on there. I don't want anyone to be able to see my private and personal data, or any other Bank,Work,Friend and Family stuff I have saved over the years. Same as old hard drives and other gadgets that have personal info stored on them, I have not binned them. But I really do need to have a good clear out, as I am amassing too much junk.

Simply physically destroy them, and if so whats the best way, a big lump hammer ? :)
 
I always remove the hard drive and get a chisel and hammer out to mangle it :)

AL
 
neil_g said:
yup, mr hammer sorts the hard drive. the rest can go to the electrical section of the local tip for recycling.
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Not too well up on the workings of Computers, but basically making sure the hard drive is smashed will do it. Suppose nothing will be saved any place else?
 
Hard drives get dismantled and the surfaces get scrubbed clean with an angle grinder then folded in half. IIRC, we've got 2 or 3 old towers up in the loft!
 
I've seen hard drive platters made of glass, if you're hitting it with a hammer cover it with something first just in case. I beat the crap out of mine with a hammer and dispose of seperately.
 
neil_g said:
basically find the bit that looks like this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Hard_disk_Western_Digital_WD1000_1_(dark1).jpg

remove it and beat to a pulp, thats where all of the data will be (obviously put any documents you want to keep onto a USB stick or something first).
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Thanks for the link, one laptop can't be started up so I can save anything from it, will just have to smash the hard drive part and hope all data gets destroyed also.



Nod said:
Hard drives get dismantled and the surfaces get scrubbed clean with an angle grinder then folded in half. IIRC, we've got 2 or 3 old towers up in the loft!
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I have heard that computers that are to be destroyed from places that deal with sensitive information, banks, government buildings etc, the computers actually do get ground up into powder.
Once the missus cut her credit card in half and put it in the bin, she thought I was paranoid when I took it out and cut it up into tiny tiny pieces. I then shared the bits between two bins, she thinks I have been watching too many Spooks style programmes o_O
 
Destroy the drives and keep the platters themselves. Send the rest to the recycling. Phones can usually be reset to factory fresh so they're ok.
 
I've read that the more secret the contents of a Govt computer, the more likely it is to be left on a bus!

IIRC, during the Vietnam conflict, the Americans were shredding their sensitive documents thinking that nobody could be bothered to reconstruct them. They were wrong!
 
I take the hard drive to bits and smash the platters then use them as hardcore when putting in fence posts etc - the rest goes to the tip - If theres anything that might be handy for parts it either gets kept (I'm terrible for this - but you never know when you might need that 4mb ram stick :lol: ) or freecycle
 
Just realised I actualy don't have anywhere to smash it up ! I live in a flat in a housing complex, and it's a shared garden. If you fart you get a letter of the housing! Oh the days when I lived in a semi detached house, with it's own big garage..
 
jonbeeza said:
Just realised I actualy don't have anywhere to smash it up ! I live in a flat in a housing complex, and it's a shared garden. If you fart you get a letter of the housing! Oh the days when I lived in a semi detached house, with it's own big garage..
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take it carefully apart - quietly with a screw driver , and remove the platters. Prize the platters apart (again with the screwdriver) and then cut them up with a set of bolt cutters. Then put them in a bag with a brick and drop it in the nearest river.
 
big soft moose said:
take it carefully apart - quietly with a screw driver , and remove the platters. Prize the platters apart (again with the screwdriver) and then cut them up with a set of bolt cutters. Then put them in a bag with a brick and drop it in the nearest river.
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That will be the River Mersey then lol
 
Al1944 said:
I always remove the hard drive and get a chisel and hammer out to mangle it :)

AL
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So why not purchase a Hard Drive Caddy and use the removed HD as a back up to your new Computer or jjust to keep your Photos on, only cost a few pounds and cheaper than a new portable HD

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DIGIFLEX-Dr...8&qid=1395997439&sr=8-1&keywords=hd+caddy+2.5
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Screw-drive...8&qid=1395997439&sr=8-2&keywords=hd+caddy+2.5
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dynamode-Po...8&qid=1395997439&sr=8-4&keywords=hd+caddy+2.5
 
I assumed we were talking about broken hard drives
 
Not sure if this is true, but I used to work with a guy who had previously worked on an MOD site. When they "retired" a disk, it was given to squadies for some physical abuse and then buried within the compound so you'd have to get past guards and stuff to even dig them up. Of course then the MOD decided to sell the site so they had to go and find all the disks they had buried over the years.

Of course, they were far too sensible to keep a map of where they had buried them in case it fell into the wrong hands. So yeah, days of searches with metal detectors :D
 
jonbeeza said:
Just realised I actualy don't have anywhere to smash it up ! I live in a flat in a housing complex, and it's a shared garden. If you fart you get a letter of the housing! Oh the days when I lived in a semi detached house, with it's own big garage..
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Have you got a drill? ;)
 
Yes - if you can dismantle the hard drive unit and drill a few holes through the disk that should do it.

AL
 
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stryvya said:
Seems like a waste when you could re-use it
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Old and slow, and of course broken. Computers are a lot cheaper now, so I may as well replace it with new. When I bought my first Laptop, the cheapest base model I could find was £700, I can now get a base model Laptop for £300.
 
srichards said:
Destroy the drives and keep the platters themselves. Send the rest to the recycling. Phones can usually be reset to factory fresh so they're ok.
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The data still stays on there though (ie is recoverable). call me paranoid but anything that has stored data, be it a phone, hard drive, memory card, tape, it all gets smashed to pieces and then chucked on a fire. The motherboards and other bits get recycled and chucked in the dump and the cases go to metal section too. I recently got rid of a crapload of stuff and used some of the hard drive platters as coasters, the exposure to unclean air and scratches they gain renders them unusable and useful at the same time.
 
jonbeeza said:
Old and slow, and of course broken. Computers are a lot cheaper now, so I may as well replace it with new. When I bought my first Laptop, the cheapest base model I could find was £700, I can now get a base model Laptop for £300.
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Well actually what I`m trying to point out is that regardless of speed (compared to today's HD) it could be used as a depository for your old, rarely used Files and Photo`s

Or as a Duplicate HD for those cherished Photo`s
 
trencheel303 said:
The data still stays on there though (ie is recoverable). call me paranoid but anything that has stored data, be it a phone, hard drive, memory card, tape, it all gets smashed to pieces and then chucked on a fire. The motherboards and other bits get recycled and chucked in the dump and the cases go to metal section too. I recently got rid of a crapload of stuff and used some of the hard drive platters as coasters, the exposure to unclean air and scratches they gain renders them unusable and useful at the same time.
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I was half thinking of waiting for bonfire night, then I would stick it all on there. But it's not very environmentally friendly doing that, so I probably wont do that. I will end up taking everything to bits and get shut that way. I gave a friend an old Laptop that I thought I had re formatted, but he recovered some of my old documents !

stryvya said:
Well actually what I`m trying to point out is that regardless of speed (compared to today's HD) it could be used as a depository for your old, rarely used Files and Photo`s

Or as a Duplicate HD for those cherished Photo`s
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Well to tell you the truth, I don't want little bits of stuff saved on various old drives and other media storage devices. I want to get rid of old stuff and condense it down to about three new clean fresh drives/storage devices.
 
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Be careful if you are taking the drives apart to destroy the platters, some HDD platters are made of glass or ceramic, with a metallic coating. So whilst they may look like metal, these do shatter into tiny shards if bent or drilled into. When I disassemble my old drives, I take a nail and scratch the surface of the platters up before deposing of them. If you have really sensitive information, you can get your drives shredded, but it can be expensive.
 
Physically destroying a drive seems a little excessive when there are a range of software solutions that could make the data irretrievable.

My favourite method is DBAN (free)

Boot from the media and select the DoD 5220.22-M option. This is the US Department of Defence standard for securely wiping data. It will prevent any software based recovery of data on that drive.

For the overly paranoid there is also the option to manual set the number of data passes.
 
neil_g said:
Several passes of an erase program - hours

Big hammer - instant

:D
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Several passes of an erase program - reusable drive

Big hammer - scrap metal

I would also suggest that hitting it with a big hammer sounds far simpler than it would actually be. Whilst you might damage the working mechanisms of the drive you wouldn't have totally destroyed the information on the spindle, the only way to ensure that would be to destroy the surface of each spindle. To do this you'd have to open the external housing and that's not going to be a quick job.

Secure wiping on the other hand will remove any chance of data recovery assuming an adequate number of passes.
 
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JohnBradbury said:
Several passes of an erase program - reusable drive

Big hammer - scrap metal

I would also suggest that hitting it with a big hammer sounds far simpler than it would actually be. Whilst you might damage the working mechanisms of the drive you wouldn't have totally destroyed the information on the spindle, the only way to ensure that would be to destroy the surface of each spindle. To do this you'd have to open the external housing and that's not going to be a quick job.

Secure wiping on the other hand will remove any chance of data recovery assuming an adequate number of passes.
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The op said he didn't want to reuse the drive. And it depends how big the hammer is ;)
 
neil_g said:
The op said he didn't want to reuse the drive. And it depends how big the hammer is ;)
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Correct.

I do not want the drives or any other salvageable bits, I am simply going to re new my stuff. I know some are saying I can use programs to erase any data from my old bits and bobs, but this requires the devices to be started so they can run the cleaning software etc. This I can't do as most of the old stuff is no longer running, and it's pointless getting it to run only to get rid of it. Oh and I don't want to recover any data as I already have copies, just I don't want anybody else to be able to recover it.
 
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JohnBradbury said:
Several passes of an erase program - reusable drive

Big hammer - scrap metal

I would also suggest that hitting it with a big hammer sounds far simpler than it would actually be. Whilst you might damage the working mechanisms of the drive you wouldn't have totally destroyed the information on the spindle, the only way to ensure that would be to destroy the surface of each spindle. To do this you'd have to open the external housing and that's not going to be a quick job.

Secure wiping on the other hand will remove any chance of data recovery assuming an adequate number of passes.
Click to expand...

Just drive a nail through it. If the nail gets far enough to come out the other side, it's already smashed the platters. Job done.

Again call me paranoid but there are no software solutions I trust. Now being super paranoid but what if the program you use is backdoor'd to actually make data retrievable by government software? Wouldn't chance it, personally.


jonbeeza said:
I was half thinking of waiting for bonfire night, then I would stick it all on there. But it's not very environmentally friendly doing that, so I probably wont do that. I will end up taking everything to bits and get shut that way. I gave a friend an old Laptop that I thought I had re formatted, but he recovered some of my old documents !
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I admittedly chucked some old small electronics on a fire the other day and it was interesting after they'd all burned down to see what the metal chassis looked like. Also the batteries make quite a pop lol. Keep your distance.
 
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Michel Lotito could have made a fortune in confidential data destruction. Wouldn't be going near the data once he had 'processed' it.
 
JohnBradbury said:
Several passes of an erase program - reusable drive

Big hammer - scrap metal

I would also suggest that hitting it with a big hammer sounds far simpler than it would actually be. Whilst you might damage the working mechanisms of the drive you wouldn't have totally destroyed the information on the spindle, the only way to ensure that would be to destroy the surface of each spindle. To do this you'd have to open the external housing and that's not going to be a quick job.

Secure wiping on the other hand will remove any chance of data recovery assuming an adequate number of passes.
Click to expand...

four screws , 5 minuites - hardly rocket science (and that assuming you use a small hammer - a four pound sledge will trash the platterns through the drive housing

also secure wiping assumes the drive is operable - the OP was talking about broken equipment
 
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Specialist recovery firms can extract data from a hard drive even if it's not working. IIRC the hard drive records bits as demagnetised/magnetised, so even if the HDD mechanism doesn't spin, the data is still on the platters. If someone really wanted to get the information, they could.
 
omens said:
Specialist recovery firms can extract data from a hard drive even if it's not working...
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I hardly think any organisation is going to be interested in my very mundane lifestyle, it's thieving little scumbags hands I don't want it to fall into.
 
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