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What do you do with old electronics, particularly computers?


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DH is paranoid that places like Goodwill will not actually wipe the hard drive clean and that people will get our info somehow.

 

Consequently, we have 4 or 5 non-working computers piled up in our garage.

 

Where do you take yours?

 

I guess I could remove the hard drive and take the rest of it to a dump site.

 

Dawn

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We give them to the boy, who proceeds to take them apart. He helped me salvage the hard drive from my netbook which died earlier this year. He's been eyeing it, but I'm not quite ready to let him take it apart. My parents have given him some random parts and components too.

 

I would remove the hard drive if you're concerned. It's not that hard, then you can destroy it and donate the rest.

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I guess we're not all that worried. My dh wiped the hard drives, then reinstalled the operating system on them and sold them at our last garage sale. That was 2 years ago, we now have a whole new batch of crappy laptops in the closet waiting for him to return from deployment to wipe and then sell.

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DH is paranoid that places like Goodwill will not actually wipe the hard drive clean and that people will get our info somehow.

 

Consequently, we have 4 or 5 non-working computers piled up in our garage.

 

Where do you take yours?

 

I guess I could remove the hard drive and take the rest of it to a dump site.

 

Dawn

We drop computers and monitors off with a donation to FreeGeek. They re-use the parts they can and safely dispose of the toxics in the parts they can't. You may have an equivalent organization there.

 

http://www.freegeek.org/

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I take the hard drives out and then either donate or recycle them (actually there is a place here to recycle electronics and the proceeds go to charity, so it's sort of both.) I have a little Rubbermaid crate full of hard drives, partly because I'm afraid that they will never be wiped enough and partly because I'm afraid that I will forget to backup some important file. I'm pretty sure the latter is pack rat mentality..."but I may NEED it someday!"

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Even if you wipe it clean, aren't there ways to get the info to come back up if you have the know how?

 

None of us is overly tech savvy. That is the one skill none of us seems to have. I hope my oldest WILL have it someday, as he is just learning, but it isn't there yet.

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Did you all ever think about the fact that wiping isn't really wiping, even reloading the OS isn't. I can still get your files. You should use a hard drive wipe utility that writes over every bit of the drive plate.

 

Otherwise, take it a part and destroy the power source and plates.

 

I donate and recyle the rest. :) (While I don't add the hard disk, I do enclose any OEM software if it is a CPU)

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They sit and take up space while DH intends to fix, sell, or whatever other idea he has....we have a desktop given to us by a friend. It still runs. It is at least 15 years old.....it takes an hour to boot up, and lots of time to load a game....he wants to keep it for the kids to play on. They are.Ised.to speed in a computer. It has nothing Important on it, I want to trash it! So, it sits in my front room, taking up space....

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Why yes, I did think of that, hence, my questions.

 

Did you all ever think about the fact that wiping isn't really wiping, even reloading the OS isn't. I can still get your files. You should use a hard drive wipe utility that writes over every bit of the drive plate.

 

Otherwise, take it a part and destroy the power source and plates.

 

I donate and recyle the rest. :) (While I don't add the hard disk, I do enclose any OEM software if it is a CPU)

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