Trashing my laptops.

March 1, 2013 9:26 AM

How I can best dispose of my two laptop computers in an environmentally friendly way that ensure my personal data is protected and not stolen? Added difficulty level: Neither one turns on!

I would love to get rid of my computers in an environmentally friendly way such as recycling but I'm concerned about someone scavenging for my hard disks, so traditional recycling programs may not be helpful here. Both computers got to the point where they are so old and overheated that neither one turns on, and so I have no ability to wipe the hard disks. Is there any other option than physically destroying the hard drive?

Looking for quick, cheap, easy solution. I'm located in the DC area, if that helps.

posted by the foreground to computers & internet (11 answers total)

Remove the hard drives (should be pretty easy, some of them only require a single screw), recycle the body. Depending on how paranoid you are, there are lots of fun ways to destroy a bare hard drive, from removing the controller board (which renders it unreadable to the casually curious, but can still be forensically recovered) to physically destroying the platters using a drill press or a microwave.
posted by Oktober at 9:30 AM on March 1

They make SATA to USB and IDE to USB cables, so if you had another computer laying around, you could remove the drives, hook them up to the computer, and wipe them that way.
posted by zabuni at 9:31 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]

The only way to absolutely, positively destroy data on a hard disk is by physically destroying the platters. However, unless you're Very Important, zero-filling the drive and giving it to a qualified e-waste recycling facility should be enough. Get a USB enclosure for the drive, connect it to a computer that works, and follow as many of the directions in the link above as you feel necessary.
posted by griphus at 9:33 AM on March 1 [1 favorite]

(Also, if you do have another computer, you can just keep the drives in USB enclosures and use them as external hard drives.)
posted by griphus at 9:37 AM on March 1 [2 favorites]

I recently recycled about 10 years' worth of household computers. However, I removed the hard drives and have them all in a shoebox... just in case I need them later!
posted by KokuRyu at 9:40 AM on March 1

My good friend's son runs a company out of Philadelphia called EraseMyLaptop that takes laptops by UPS, securely erases the drives (and sends you pictures of the process), reuses what parts they can, and passes the rest to EPA- and R2-certified recyclers.
posted by nicwolff at 10:52 AM on March 1 [3 favorites]

(Wow, nicwolff, thanks for the link to EraseMyLaptop! I had no idea ... I guess these laptops sitting in my office are going to be heading out there.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:51 PM on March 1

Darik's Boot and Nuke is a high-grade disk wiper that fits on a floppy disk, which I mention only to emphasize its small size. After you follow zabuni's advice, if you choose to do so, run DBAN. It's a self-booting Linux partition and runs a very simple program which will wipe drives so as to make them either completely unrecoverable (takes forever) or very expensively recoverable (far faster). It overwrites every single byte and was, for a while, capable of the sort of disk-wipe that the CIA required. (DBAN didn't get worse, but the government got even more paranoid and raised its standard.)

Then destroy the drives. Search for local document destruction companies-- some of them may do HDDs as well.
posted by Sunburnt at 6:00 PM on March 1

Like KokuRyu, I would remove the hard drives and keep them. A bare laptop drive is pretty small anyway.
posted by anaelith at 8:06 PM on March 1

I use the fastest, cheapest and (I think) effective means of removing information from old hard drives: HDD on garage floor, goggles on, hit with 3 pound sledge several times. The only thing I can't tell you is how environmentally friendly that is.
posted by forthright at 8:08 PM on March 1

When I lived in DC, I took my old electronics to a monthly e-waste recycling event. Looks like it's still going on. They charge $10 per drive to shred your hard drive in front of you.
posted by aloysius on the mixing boards at 1:40 PM on April 28