Old laptop recycling

[chip100t]

In the past when disposing of an old laptop.
I have removed the hard drive then the large metallic disk inside that, that has previously always been made of the hardest material known to man. And then smashed everything to smitherines (apart from the hard drive disk that would take a lump hammer and cold chisel to even dent) to before sending it all to landfill.

I have just taken my latest laptop apart and the hard drive apart to reveal three disks that shattered into a million pieces on removal as they appeared to be made from the same material as Christmas baubles were when I was a child.

In the name of saving the planet and recycling any reusable materials is it safe to leave the rest of the laptop in the electrical items pile at my local dump without some fraudster emptying my overdraft or gaining acces to emails or any other sensitive data or information.

In short is the hard drive the only part of a laptop that need be removed Before taking to the tip.

Thanks

 

[jtr1962]

Probably a glass platter HDD.

No, unless there's an SSD in there also, no worries about anyone getting your sensitive information.

Sometimes the RAM from older laptops still gets enough on eBay to make it worthwhile selling, so you might want to keep that.

 

[chip100t]

Thanks, can't see anything that looks like an SSD. I have removed the ram also to stick in my pile of stuff to put on eBay.

Thanks again

 

[3_gun]

Nothing needs to be removed & destroyed. In Win 7 & newer you just need to delete the user name(s) that you use(d). That gets rid of any personal info/files on the HD. Then use system restore found under Problem Shooting. That refreshes the OP system to original settings, deleting apps & programs that were added. At this point not even the NSA could find much of anything other than the OP system.

 

[chip100t]

Nothing needs to be removed & destroyed. In Win 7 & newer you just need to delete the user name(s) that you use(d). That gets rid of any personal info/files on the HD. Then use system restore found under Problem Shooting. That refreshes the OP system to original settings, deleting apps & programs that were added. At this point not even the NSA could find much of anything other than the OP system.

I could not delete or system restore as the laptop no longer turned on. So wanted to make sure, if I dumped it whole some clever person could of got it going again.

 

[ampdude]

I would have just removed the battery pack like I always do, but that's just me. Sounds like when a dish fell out of my cabinet last night. That sucked. Still looking around for shards of that.

 

[KITROBASKIN]

Spinning hard drives have a seriously sticky magnet, right? I have pulled those before from old desktops.

 

[Alaric Darconville]

Nothing needs to be removed & destroyed. In Win 7 & newer you just need to delete the user name(s) that you use(d). That gets rid of any personal info/files on the HD. Then use system restore found under Problem Shooting. That refreshes the OP system to original settings, deleting apps & programs that were added.

And then someone who understands computers will run one of the various data recovery programs and get a ton of the user data back.

At this point not even the NSA could find much of anything other than the OP system.

Don't have to be in the NSA to download Piriform Recuva.

 

[3_gun]

You would need to be a pretty high profile user to make that kind of data diving worthwhile. Yea data could/would be recovered but it would take major time/work to make any sense of the fragments recovered. Me myself & I is more worried about monkeypox

 

[aginthelaw]

Monkeypox is now in nj. If A laptop is still working you can download a program that writes zeros to the hard drive. it only requires one pass and it makes data totally irretrievable. The DoD uses a program that rewrites the drive 7 times and takes days. Not necessary. If The hard drive is in a computer that has stopped working they make external boxes available so you can still read the drive in case you ever want to retrieve your data. If you don't care, about the data you can just take a drill poke a few holes thru it. smashing it works also.

 

[bykfixer]

Moderator Edit
Please, no politics unrelated to the topic at hand.

--Alaric D

 

[greatscoot]

In the past when disposing of an old laptop.
I have removed the hard drive then the large metallic disk inside that, that has previously always been made of the hardest material known to man. And then smashed everything to smitherines (apart from the hard drive disk that would take a lump hammer and cold chisel to even dent) to before sending it all to landfill.

I have just taken my latest laptop apart and the hard drive apart to reveal three disks that shattered into a million pieces on removal as they appeared to be made from the same material as Christmas baubles were when I was a child.

In the name of saving the planet and recycling any reusable materials is it safe to leave the rest of the laptop in the electrical items pile at my local dump without some fraudster emptying my overdraft or gaining acces to emails or any other sensitive data or information.

In short is the hard drive the only part of a laptop that need be removed Before taking to the tip.

Thanks

Not sure where you live, but bestbuy will take old laptops and recycle them. I would still remove and destroy the Hard Drive.

 

[alpg88]

Well you could use it as a fill when you pour a concrete, lol

 

[PhotonWrangler]

I've seen pics of hard drive platters with holes drilled through them. While this will render them unusable in a regular computer. ther are systems that are capable of scanning the intact portions of the platter and recovering bits of info. If your computer isn't a high value target, maybe that's good enough, but I personally wouldn't be comfortable with simply perforating the platter with a drill or by other means. I prefer to use a good quality disk wiping program (assuming the host computer still works). This will either write all zeroes, ones, or random digits across the entire surface, usually more than once.