How do I get rid of all these old servers?

March 17, 2006 2:13 AM

I have hardware. Servers, to be precise. A stack of them. Taking up space. What's the best way to get rid of them while getting something in return? Charity, and if so, who? Or selling them, and who's buying?

After running a web site for a good number of years, I sold the thing to someone else, but I got stuck with the hardware. Taking up a significant portion of the spare bedroom for well over a year and a half now, it's got to go. They're '01-'03 vintage servers, nothing comparable to modern machines, but perfectly capable of running some very high-traffic sites even today.

I'm not really hurting for either the cash I'd get (not poor enough) or the tax break (not rich enough), so either sale or charity is a viable option. As for charities, who could really use some old (Windows licensed) servers with some good life left in 'em? Alternately, if I'm looking for cash, who out there (if anyone) can recognize a real resale value (whatever it may be) and pay a fair price? eBay would be my last resort, just on principle.

Oh, and is there anything more necessary than a Boot 'n Nuke? While none of the hard drives have any financial information, they've got some people's old data (e-mails and passwords), which doesn't really need to be spread around.

posted by SkelPaff to Technology (15 answers total)

Depending on what you mean by 'nuke'. To be a bit more safe than a straight format it wouldn't be hard to run shred from a Linux boot CD or something. It's a relatively painless procedure, so worth it in my opinion.
posted by edd at 2:26 AM on March 17, 2006

Response by poster: Actually, I was thinking along the lines of Darik's Boot and Nuke, which just automates the process.
posted by SkelPaff at 2:30 AM on March 17, 2006

Very handy! I might have to bookmark that myself.
posted by edd at 2:37 AM on March 17, 2006

Where are you located? There's nothing in your profile.

I got a server off of Ask.MeFi about a year ago that's running a Direct Connect Hub for my college's dorms.

I also recently got an old Xeon box (SGH2 board, dual 1.8 Ghz, 1 GB ram) for $300 shipped off of eBay (got it for the PCI-X slots, which good raid cards require). Ebay acts as a suprisingly accurate barometer of worth for old hardware, when it sells.

What are the machines?
posted by blasdelf at 4:10 AM on March 17, 2006

Oh yeah, how big are they?

There's an unfortunate corrollarry with older servers: the larger old 6U 4-way P3 servers are worth substantially less, due to their low power-to-girth ratio, and also cost substantially more to ship.
posted by blasdelf at 4:13 AM on March 17, 2006

Heck, I know this really isn't the place, but what are the machines? There's enough BOFH and Geek types around that they may buy them here, and if not, they can at least tell you what they might move for, or if the best you can do is fill the case with concrete and use it to moor boats.
posted by eriko at 5:16 AM on March 17, 2006

The Free Software Foundation needs hardware every now and again. You can mail [e-mail] to see if they're interested.
posted by brett at 5:19 AM on March 17, 2006

FWIW, DBAN is used by the US Department of Energy to sanitize hard drives used in nuclear plant operation. Running under the DoD 5220-22.M three pass methodology is probably good enough; if you're really paranoid run it twice.

For modern SCSI/ATA drives, running it once means "You're going to spend a lot of money to recover any data from this drive." Running it twice means "you might be able to recover some data via atomic force or scanning electron microscopy"; Running it more means "yeah, right."

I second brett's suggestion, and add that the Electronic Frontier Foundation might want some hardware, too. In my experience, very few non-profits will turn down such a donation.
posted by leapfrog at 6:38 AM on March 17, 2006

"As for charities, who could really use some old (Windows licensed) servers with some good life left in 'em?"

Shoot me an email, SkelPaff. I work for a non-profit that could use a couple.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 7:02 AM on March 17, 2006

I am a computer science student for a small liberal arts college in Iowa. I would absolutely LOVE to get a better server (or 2) for our department to supplement the (crap) our IT department offers us.

I'd love to hear from you in an e-mail if you're still offering.

PS: We are a non-profit so you should be able to get a tax deduction if that matters.
posted by yellowbkpk at 7:12 AM on March 17, 2006

Have you tried Craigslist? Probably plenty of people willing to take stuff off your hands.
Sure, you have to sort through a bunch of flakes & idiots, but at least you get rid of the stuff. :-)
posted by drstein at 10:20 AM on March 17, 2006

I've donated hardware to local charities through the 501c mailing list for my area. Go to the N-TEN website and subscribe to the list for your area. Posting a "I have this to give away" is perfectly legit.
posted by phearlez at 10:57 AM on March 17, 2006

For modern SCSI/ATA drives, running it once means "You're going to spend a lot of money to recover any data from this drive." Running it twice means "you might be able to recover some data via atomic force or scanning electron microscopy"; Running it more means "yeah, right."

Incorrect. Running it once means that the drive is not recoverable, period. It has never been shown to be technologically feasable to recover the contents of a drive after it has been overwritten with a single pass.
posted by Jairus at 11:49 AM on March 17, 2006

Jairus: I'm curious to see your sources for that information. Peter Gutmann's well-known paper seems to be pretty clear on the issue. At Usenix in 1996, he demonstrated exactly this phenomenon by recovering data directly from a previously erased drive. See also NCSC-TG-025, The NCSC publication "A Guide to Understanding Data Remanence in Automated Information systems".

Many papers have been published in the usual scholarly journals demonstrating that data can be recovered after a single pass, and even after multiple passes. (abstract, abstract)

Even if there was no demonstration that data could be recovered after an overwrite, it would not be proof that it is impossible, nor even proof that it is unfeasible. The fact that I have never been to Tasmania does not prove that I can never go to Tasmania.

If you know of any research that substantiates your claim, I would like to see it.
posted by leapfrog at 2:04 PM on March 17, 2006

I'm familiar with Gutmann's research, but his work with recovery and the work on STM microscopy has not translated to an ability to recover data. There are no police forces in the world with access to services which allow them to do this. The NSA outsources their data recovery to a firm which does not have the ability to do this.

Barring any great leaps forward in magnetic imagery, it is safe to say that recovering the contents of a hard drive after it has been overwritten is not possible with the technology of today, tomorrow, or the foreseeable future.
posted by Jairus at 2:31 PM on March 17, 2006