Disposing of old disc drive/computer

[haysi06]

Can anyone suggest a secure way of disposing of an old disc drive and laptop please?

Obviously I don't want to just put it out with the household rubbish and similarly I don't want anyone to 'retrieve' it LOL

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[buildersmate]

Take the disk drive out and hit it with a large hammer a few times. The security services incinerate theirs.

[Gromit]

Can you do a clean install of the operating system from the original disks. This should completely wipe you hard disk of everything, even deleted items. It should then be safe to recycle or give to someone else.

[whiffey]

Disposing of computers reminds me of breaking up an old system. It had those huge freestanding SMD80 and SMD300 disk drives, total system capacity 760Mb (yes, megabytes). I had great pleasure in hurling the disks from a second floor window - they would never spin again ! System RAM was 4mb, and considered enormous at the time. The kernel was a staggeringly efficient 780k. Compared to the huge OS of modern times it was a programming miracle.

[naky-nag-nat]

To be totally safe - as buildersmate says - take out the HD and smash it to bits. Even a 'clean install' can leave traces of your info, which can be accessed by someone with enough time, patience and know how.

[rojash]

whiffey, sounds like an enormous monster to me. My first serious computer had 4K of RAM. We later had it upgraded to 8K at a cost of 360 quid. Our first network server had a 5 MB hard drive.

[KevSparky]

Use Darik's Boot and Nuke here: http://dban.sourceforge.net/

This is a bootable disk that erases every hard drive it finds on boot. It does so by writing then deleting every sing bit on the disk several times. This will certainly erase any residual trace of data on a disk.

[ACtheTROLL]

you might find this useful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emgXO8OusUQ&NR= 1

[haysi06]

Thank you!

I have the drive from an old lappy and have used a 'caddy' (hope thats the right term) to retrieve photos and files but need to dispose of it now. Will most probably do the bashing it with the hammer!

I have my old lappy that is intact apart from the screen being smashed, and will also smash that up too! Stress relief LOL

[ChuckFickens]

I know that this may sound silly, but unless it's a borrowed caddy, or it normally has a larger drive in it why not just leave it in the caddy and use it