How do you dispose of your computer?

[SOS]

How do you dispose of your computer?


What have you found on old computers?

[Radioguy]

Drill holes into the HD to shatter the plates. Really no other practical way for an average person to protect their info otherwise.

I've found everything imaginable on old PCs or HDs I've run across, or have been given. I just don't give a dam anymore if it's only a few gigs or less, I usually don't even check those.

[J. PETERSON]

http://shop.military-club.cz/images/airsoft/uhc/uhc_desert_s.jpg

[sknight]

vaporize it. kind of like when mythbusters vaporized that cement truck.

Actually, electronics, especially computers are recycled to recover the heavy metals, especially the gold. check with your local township, computer manufacturer (kind of like how they have recycling for batteries). If it still works, they just send em to developing nations.

[khemystri]

bake hard drive in the oven

[NightStalker3]

Thermite, lots of it.

[DoughBoy]

Drilled and passed over a VERY powerful electromagnet

[sknight]

The electromagnet thing is a myth. Consumers won't have one powerful enough available to them to do a thing to an HD.

[DoughBoy]

The electromagnet thing is a myth. Consumers won't have one powerful enough available to them to do a thing to an HD.

Incorrect, sir. Placing the platter on an electromagnet after it has been drilled and removed from the steel casing will most certainly do something to the ability to recover any information from said 'hard drive'.

[funnybonez]

http://www.wogwoe.com/Idiots/Tnt.JPG

[sknight]

Now I feel like the Russian:

http://wackbag.com/showthread.php?t=23263&highlight=hard+drive+magnet

As far as the HD, most likely pulling the platters from the case will allow the degaussing, but within the case, nah. I posted a link referring to this in November.

[kvuo]

i pull the hdd's and keep them. rest goes in the dumpster

[ChestersLiver]

I use a prog called Active Kill Disk, supposedly erases disks according to DOD standards. Then I remove the platter, hang it from a tree and introduce it to Mr. Shotgun.

[It doesn't really erase the disk, it writes over it several times.]

[Stig]

vaporize it. kind of like when mythbusters vaporized that cement truck.

Actually, electronics, especially computers are recycled to recover the heavy metals, especially the gold. check with your local township, computer manufacturer (kind of like how they have recycling for batteries). If it still works, they just send em to developing nations.
That's what I want...some Niger in Nigeria getting my credit card info!

[Death Metal Moe]

Do you all work for some government organization?

There's nothing but some porn on my hard drive, I just chuck them.

I mean I always take whatever parts are somewhat good from a comp before I trash it to rebuild something later, but the hard drives just go in the trash for me.

Am I missing something here?

[sknight]

Temp files. Ever go online banking? Online shopping?

[Death Metal Moe]

Temp files. Ever go online banking? Online shopping?

Oooh. OK, point well taken.

I haven't thrown one my own hard drives out since I started using computers about 5 years ago, but from this point forward I will drill a few holes through the case of all my hard drives, just in case.

I don't have much money, but it's mine and I want to keep it.

[ruckstande]

Yeah, anyone who really wants to can get a "plethora" of information off of you hard drive. Just drill through it. Unless you are a secret agent, no one is going to be that interested into recovering your Snood scores.

[Joe Avezzano]

Can't you just run a large magnet over the HD to wipe it? Or doesn't it work like floppies?

[al885]

I shoot HD's to pieces with my AKM.

[aahpandasrun]

Take hard drives, place into new computer, trash old computer. I have 4 hard drives now in my current computer.

[Turfmower]

I have a pile of old computers some are old XT from the 80's. Besides the hard drives what do you do with the rest?

[sknight]

Take hard drives, place into new computer, trash old computer. I have 4 hard drives now in my current computer.
Good idea. Get external cases, as they are really cheap and you'll have a good outboard. Just wipe out the partition and reformat.

[wes mantooth]

I jerk off on them. Doesn't do anything; just like to jerk.

[mikeybot]

Yank out the HD, trash the rest(unless there's something worth saving like still usable RAM)

[lawdawg0417]

give it to opie as a present.

[Sinn Fein]

I keep the drives as well and re-use them.

[WOWmagnet]

God what know-it-all toolage on this board.

Preheat oven to 400f.

Bake hard drive(s) for 10-15 minutes until golden fucked. Done.

Electromagnet my ass. You'd have to open the drive to have a shot in hell of using a magnet unless it's a "junkyard" electromagnet.

Drilling is OK but more messy.

[carcrash_69]

Take a torch and a hammer to the hard drive. tenderized and cooked to perfection.

[ChestersLiver]

give it to opie as a present.

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

[DoughBoy]

God what know-it-all toolage on this board.

Preheat oven to 400f.

Bake hard drive(s) for 10-15 minutes until golden fucked. Done.

Electromagnet my ass. You'd have to open the drive to have a shot in hell of using a magnet unless it's a "junkyard" electromagnet.

Drilling is OK but more messy.

Perhaps you don't read well. I put the platters themselves on the magnet AFTER I remove them from the drive.

[rustytrombone1]

I sent mine to Nigeria...Heard they need them there...

[iSpeakEloquent]

my old dell notebook (after "mike" told me to buy a new hard drive for no reason) is sitting under my comp table.

[EvilEva]

I tell my husband to "get rid of this fucking thing" then after sitting in the corner of our bedroom for 2 months I threaten to withold sex . . . so then he takes it apart, puts some of the items he wants to keep in bins at his workshop and takes the rest to our recycling center.

[SlimeyGoatFuckr]

I got mad at my laptop one day and smashed it on the floor, yeah dumb move, it was 7 months old but looked brand new (I had a better laptop the next day). I took out the memory sticks though I don't have another laptop that could use them and I took out the drive. Nothing else in there people could use, the display is shattered and the DVD drive is smashed.

[roche]

What the fuck are you guys doing on your computer that you are so afraid people will find?

[SlimeyGoatFuckr]

What the fuck are you guys doing on your computer that you are so afraid people will find?
Paying bills.

[roche]

Paying bills.

If you are paying bills through a website, then no personal data is stored on your drive. If you are using something like Quickbooks, well, that would make sense to be so sensitive about the drive then.

[shakespear]

My brother used to do PC repair. He said like 90% of guys that brought in PC's had kiddy porn.

The first clue was when they tell you "dont turn it on" or "call me right before you turn it on"

The girls, no matter what age, had homemade porn...

[BullsLawDan]

I jerk off on them. Doesn't do anything; just like to jerk.

LOL sir, LOL.

[Hydrosludge]

I have four drives sitting in a drawer taking up space because I do not know what to do with them. I should RMA them, but I am too paranoid about my financial info on them. I give up on maxtor drives.

Does any one have any suggestions, or should I cut them in half in a chop saw and toss them?

[Radioguy]

Yeah, anyone who really wants to can get a "plethora" of information off of you hard drive. Just drill through it. Unless you are a secret agent, no one is going to be that interested into recovering your Snood scores.

Damn. I still play that. :icon_mrgr

[sknight]

I have four drives sitting in a drawer taking up space because I do not know what to do with them. I should RMA them, but I am too paranoid about my financial info on them. I give up on maxtor drives.

Does any one have any suggestions, or should I cut them in half in a chop saw and toss them?
I have a friend that runs a recovery thing and he told me about all the shit that he sees on the HD's that come in for repair or recovery.

[MyKneeGrows]

Being a welder and working in a metal shop, we have a electro magnet for certain tooling operations. Plug it in, set the HD on the bed, hit the power. DONE!! You couldn't pry that thing off with crane when its on.

[Three Hole Puncher]

Just like three days ago I was carrying an old computer out to the curb when I noticed that it still had a hard drive in it. The computer was like ten years old and I yanked the drive and checked it out for nostalgia's sake.

Let me just say this...

My taste in pornography has become much more "sophisticated" in the span of a decade. The shit I had on there was barely batch worthy.

[Three Hole Puncher]

Being a welder and working in a metal shop, we have a electro magnet for certain tooling operations. Plug it in, set the HD on the bed, hit the power. DONE!! You couldn't pry that thing off with crane when its on.

I work in a hospital and I repair the electronic medical equipment. Before you dispose of a piece of medical equipment with a hard drive you are absolutely REQUIRED to wipe the info off the drives... patient confidentiality.

I use the hospital's MRI machine... a 2.0 Tesla magnet. Wipes the living fuck out of a hard drive.

[Southern Fried Pest]

I usually just take it apart, put the parts in a drawer somewhere, and the case in the attic, I will usually reuse hard drives, but when one dies I disassemble it and scrape up the platters, and eventually throw it away after spinning it up a few times with the top off, and drawing all over it. I could care less if anyone gets ahold of the data, since I don't do anything someone could use, I just like taking the hard drive apart and destroying it

[roche]

I work in a hospital and I repair the electronic medical equipment. Before you dispose of a piece of medical equipment with a hard drive you are absolutely REQUIRED to wipe the info off the drives

HIPPA requirement right?

[ern]

I thought that the rewriting programs only went 5 times, and you need at least 7 times to keep someone from retrieving it. I read somewhere that the feds have a program that can retrieve it no matter how many times it was rewritten. I also heard that (broken platters) drives can now be restored, in much the same way as shredded documents can be restored, depending on how they were shreded (with or without cross cuts and numbers in same pile).

I haven't had a puter class in years, but I still try to keep up a little on the hardware side. Can anyone that is still into this stuff enlighten me?

[INeedsomePOON]

you can't retrieve that much info if anything at all after 7 wipings, Yes they can take the broken platters and run them under a microscope and create platters of data. Doesn't work if wiped and broken. At least not @ FBI level perhaps if NSA had it with supercomputers but I don't that will happen unless your Osama... :icon_wink

[ern]

you can't retrieve that much info if anything at all after 7 wipings, Yes they can take the broken platters and run them under a microscope and create platters of data. Doesn't work if wiped and broken. At least not @ FBI level perhaps if NSA had it with supercomputers but I don't that will happen unless your Osama... :icon_wink

thanks

[tripwire519]

holy paranoid guys?


hit it with a hammer and throw it away... if anyone with the motivation and the technology to view it with a hammer dent in it wanted to know your banking passwords do you really think they would wait for you to throw your computer away?


none of you are important enough for ANYONE to give a fuck about enough.

[Borderline]

If the hard drive is still good, I reuse it as a secondary drive, or plug it into an external case. If the drive is toast, I dremel out the screws and take everything apart. Those platters make real good cubicle mirrors, and I've found some of the strongest magnets I've ever seen inside hard drives.

[notalentassclwn]

Poke at the hard drive a few times with a rusty coat hanger. That should do the trick

[space_hitler]

The Department of Defense has a standard for erasing hard drives. You can get freeware programs on the internet that wiil wipe the drive to the DoD standard. ALL info is useless. Then I recycle the whole computer. I own my onw computer company that builds and repairs systems as well as WAN's and LAN's.

[notalentassclwn]

The Department of Defense has a standard for erasing hard drives. You can get freeware programs on the internet that wiil wipe the drive to the DoD standard. ALL info is useless. Then I recycle the whole computer. I own my onw computer company that builds and repairs systems as well as WAN's and LAN's.



Well..umm...err....I still like my idea

[burky79]

Thermite, lots of it.

i just read through the thread.
and your answer is so far the best for 100% no recovery

that 3000+ burn after a white hot ignition will destroy everything.

[WOWmagnet]

Perhaps you don't read well. I put the platters themselves on the magnet AFTER I remove them from the drive.


I hear ya, but isn't that a lot of unecessary work when you can just do a Betty Crocker on them?

[LiLJimmysHog]

:action-sm I just let the "authorities" take it.:action-sm

[Hydrosludge]

I just drove a punch through 4 Maxtor hard drives (less than a year old). The amount of work it would take to read anything on them will definitely detour a thief. My last name is not Bond.

[Sack of Chisels]

I don't. you never know when you might need parts.

[martianvirus]

I don't. you never know when you might need parts.Since I only go through 1 computer for about 4-6 years, I keep mine as well. I still have a 286 sitting on a shelf.

[user name]

Erase everything but the beasiality porn.

[BigFeet]

i pull the hdd's and keep them. rest goes in the dumpster
ding, ding , ding......

[poopiebottoms]

Strip the parts of your old computers and build a home file server.
Use your latest CPU available, and all working hard drives.

You can store and access movies, music, software, photos, files indefinitely.

If the drive is dead, I like the jerk off on it method. Nobody's going to steal it then.

[NotYouStupid]

I worked in a computer recycling / repair center for 2 years. We would erase harddrived to DoD Standards and you would get a guarentee on that. Whenever someone called in with a "The cops are outside and i need to destroy my HD Quick" call I would tell them to Drill it at LEAST 4 times (each quater od the hd) OR I would ask it they had a BFH sitting around. We sold off all the old computers to be melted down for all the metals and plastics. the old CPU's (Think 386 / 486) Were worth alot because of the gold in them. Same went for the motherboards.

Anthony Loves to talk about taking a shit in a spackle bucket but Nothing beats taking a dump in an old Apple II and Packing it into a 40 ft container truck bound for the orient....

[highway23]

now I feel like I have to destroy mine after reading all this paranoid pedophile shit :)

[wackbagette]

I use a program called Disk Erase (erases to DoD standards) for file deletes, copies and moves. Then I open the drives and use the platters for wind chimes and home decor. Could probably drill holes in them as well but I never throw them out.

We also rarely throw out our computers...I think we have seven running at the moment with two or three dead ones and tons of parts. We also have one computer that has been in continuous upgrades for almost 20 years.

Yes, we're geeks with no children to pay for...got a problem with that? :)

[BullsLawDan]

Everyone keeps talking about DoD standards...

This wouldn't be the same DoD that guaranteed us that Saddam had WMD, or that Vietnam would be over quickly? The DoD that said the Bay of Pigs would be a success? The DoD with "standards" like paying $900 for a toilet seat or $800 for a hammer?

Yeah... Whenever anyone says "DoD" standards, I just kind of giggle a little bit...:action-sm

[khemystri]

Yeah, I don't feel like drilling, so i'll just hang onto 'em 'til I die...

Let whoever combs through my stuff after i'm dead
toss em out... What do i care... im dead.

[DoughBoy]

Everyone keeps talking about DoD standards...

This wouldn't be the same DoD that guaranteed us that Saddam had WMD, or that Vietnam would be over quickly? The DoD that said the Bay of Pigs would be a success? The DoD with "standards" like paying $900 for a toilet seat or $800 for a hammer?

Yeah... Whenever anyone says "DoD" standards, I just kind of giggle a little bit...:action-sm

Everyone, lets give some love to CarrotTop...


ylech, sir. That was as hack as it gets.

[NotYouStupid]

Everyone keeps talking about DoD standards...

This wouldn't be the same DoD that guaranteed us that Saddam had WMD, or that Vietnam would be over quickly? The DoD that said the Bay of Pigs would be a success? The DoD with "standards" like paying $900 for a toilet seat or $800 for a hammer?

Yeah... Whenever anyone says "DoD" standards, I just kind of giggle a little bit...:action-sm


http://www.biblehelp.org/images/car%20crash%20%204.jpg

At least the EMT's are there for ya...

[BullsLawDan]

Well, i was more going for ironic than funny... but whatever.

[Buck Turgidson]

Evidence Eliminator works well.

[SmokePants]

I got mad at my laptop one day and smashed it on the floor, yeah dumb move, it was 7 months old but looked brand new (I had a better laptop the next day). I took out the memory sticks though I don't have another laptop that could use them and I took out the drive. Nothing else in there people could use, the display is shattered and the DVD drive is smashed.

Is it?

[Sunsetspawn]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/IvyMike2.jpg/753px-IvyMike2.jpg
That'll do it

[Dr. Hoffman]

I think for this next computer I'm going to introduce the hard drive to this bad boy;

http://world.guns.ru/sniper/barett_m82a1_m16.jpg

The military calls it the M-82 A1.

[Borderline]

I think for this next computer I'm going to introduce the hard drive to this bad boy;

http://world.guns.ru/sniper/barett_m82a1_m16.jpg

The military calls it the M-82 A1.


Unless that's an urban gentleman standing in a dark alley, I don't see anything.

[Dr. Hoffman]

Unless that's an urban gentleman standing in a dark alley, I don't see anything.

It was a picture of the Barret light 50 .50 caliber sniper rifle.

[DREW]

F it in the A and leave it in the woods, oh wait, computer...

[a great egg]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/IvyMike2.jpg/753px-IvyMike2.jpg
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q42/hippynation/Mightymouse.gif
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q42/hippynation/Lester.gif
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q42/hippynation/hugo.gif
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q42/hippynation/spiltmilk.gif
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q42/hippynation/herman.gif
That'll do it

Isn't it strange how beutiful that is? and yeah I'd say that wuold do the trick.

eBay. always eBay. You can find a buyer for any peice of crap as long as your honest about it and don't expect too much.

nice try

[slugbucket]

Isn't it strange how beutiful that is? and yeah I'd say that wuold do the trick.
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p76/drpepper002/13.gif
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p76/drpepper002/12.gif
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p76/drpepper002/11.gif
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p76/drpepper002/10.gif
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p76/drpepper002/9.gif

eBay. always eBay. You can find a buyer for any peice of crap as long as your honest about it and don't expect too much.
HAHAHA yep that will definately do it!

[Mother Shucker]

Hate to be Captain Obvious, but just pull the hard drive and put it in a shoe box in your closet. Will take you years to fill the shoe box, and by then any passwords you have on them will moot.

[Minister Moron]

SImple! Take it to your back yard (or local range) and empty a whole box of 40 cal. hollowpoints into it like I did. Kiddy porn alllllll over the yard makes for great fertilizer I hear.

[zagman76]

HAHAHA yep that will definately do it!

will it? :icon_roll

[little girl]

SImple! Take it to your back yard (or local range) and empty a whole box of 40 cal. hollowpoints into it like I did. Kiddy porn alllllll over the yard makes for great fertilizer I hear.


Wouldn't it be better to scatter that all over someone ELSE'S yard? I'd hate for someone to find kiddy porn all over my OWN backyard...

[Minister Moron]

Wouldn't it be better to scatter that all over someone ELSE'S yard? I'd hate for someone to find kiddy porn all over my OWN backyard...

You sure your name isnt "literal little girl"? Hey everyone its "doesn't get the joke/punchline" poster.

[little girl]

You sure your name isnt "literal little girl"? Hey everyone its "doesn't get the joke/punchline" poster.


1. LITERAL GIRL...if you are gonna make fun, at least try...

2. I got it, but you ducked.

[Minister Moron]

1. LITERAL GIRL...if you are gonna make fun, at least try...

2. I got it, but you ducked.


Touche LITERAL girl, touche.

[little girl]

Touche LITERAL girl, touche.


AWWWWW,

*kiss, kiss* MORON

[CJJames]

I pull the hard drive and cook it outdoors in a metal trash can. Throw away the rest.