Decluttering: Ancient Technology Edition
July 31, 2022 9:42 AM Subscribe
I have several laptops ranging from ancient (20 years old?) to fairly current. All are broken past the point of utility, and all have stuff on them I am resistant to losing forever (pictures, correspondence, etc.). I've been hauling them around with me this long because while I don't want to lose what's on them, I have no idea how to access and store it (or even if I can), and thinking about it makes me anxious. Just throwing them away might be liberating in a way, but I have privacy/security concerns.
Is there a place where I can just take these to get them cleaned off (hopefully in a way where I can retrieve and store what's on them) and disposed of?
Best answer: You can most likely remove the hard drives from them fairly easily (especially the older ones), and then use an adaptor cable to connect them via USB to a working computer. The kind you need will depend on what kind of hard drive ti is, but the cables are in the $30 range. If the drives work, you can get the stuff off them, then wipe them and recycle them.
If they no longer work, the likelihood of anyone going to the trouble of trying to make them work just to see what's on them is slim to none, so you could just recycle them.
posted by jonathanhughes at 9:53 AM on July 31, 2022 [6 favorites]
If they no longer work, the likelihood of anyone going to the trouble of trying to make them work just to see what's on them is slim to none, so you could just recycle them.
posted by jonathanhughes at 9:53 AM on July 31, 2022 [6 favorites]
Best answer: I was able to get the hard drive of my old laptop extracted and turned into an external hard-drive-- they literally just pulled it out, put it in a plastic case, and attached a plug to it, and boom there was all my data. If for any of your computers the issue/unusability isn't the hard drive itself, you might consider asking a local indie computer store to do that! (Best Buy might also do the same thing, but I went to a local small chain and was very happy with the pricing.) Obviously, once the hard drive is removed the rest of the laptop itself is safe to dispose of as e-waste and the store was happy to do that for me.
posted by peppercorn at 9:53 AM on July 31, 2022
posted by peppercorn at 9:53 AM on July 31, 2022
Once you pull out the drives I encourage you to find any children you know who want to pull them apart for funsies.
posted by liminal_shadows at 9:59 AM on July 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by liminal_shadows at 9:59 AM on July 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Taking out the hard drives and putting them in a hard drive enclosures for access via USB is the way to deal with old desktop and laptop computers. For the remainder of the parts, some municipalities have e-waste recycling days. Failing that, there are send-away services to deal with the remnant parts of your old computers.
posted by metatuesday at 10:00 AM on July 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by metatuesday at 10:00 AM on July 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Also, if you don't know anyone who can help, and you're anywhere near my location I'm happy to help you move data off the drives and wipe them securely. I can't recover data on dead drives, transferring and wiping is an easy job, and I enjoy helping people with tech issues.
Memail if you do live nearby and would like to take me up on it.
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:02 AM on July 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Memail if you do live nearby and would like to take me up on it.
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:02 AM on July 31, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: You can get hard drive USB adaptors in a form that just plugs straight onto the drive, which is less fiddly for this kind of use case than the kind where you need to slip the drive into some kind of enclosure as well.
This cheap USB to PATA/SATA adaptor from eBay should work fine for any drive you're likely to find in any laptop.
posted by flabdablet at 11:28 AM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
This cheap USB to PATA/SATA adaptor from eBay should work fine for any drive you're likely to find in any laptop.
posted by flabdablet at 11:28 AM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I have several laptops ranging from ancient (20 years old?) to fairly current. All are broken past the point of utility, and all have stuff on them I am resistant to losing forever
Be prepared for the strong possibility that hard drives extracted from a laptop that hasn't been powered up for 20 years might refuse to spin up at all, making everything on them inaccessible without expensive commercial data recovery procedures involving extensive drive disassembly in clean room conditions.
For future planning, the best time to extract wanted data from a decommissioned laptop is as soon after you've superseded it as is convenient.
On the other hand, if you do manage to get your oldest drives working, you'll be pleasantly surprised at the relatively tiny amount of space you'll need to make a complete backup of any of them on any modern machine.
posted by flabdablet at 11:37 AM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Be prepared for the strong possibility that hard drives extracted from a laptop that hasn't been powered up for 20 years might refuse to spin up at all, making everything on them inaccessible without expensive commercial data recovery procedures involving extensive drive disassembly in clean room conditions.
For future planning, the best time to extract wanted data from a decommissioned laptop is as soon after you've superseded it as is convenient.
On the other hand, if you do manage to get your oldest drives working, you'll be pleasantly surprised at the relatively tiny amount of space you'll need to make a complete backup of any of them on any modern machine.
posted by flabdablet at 11:37 AM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thank you, techy folk of Metafilter! My anxiety is much lower just knowing there are relatively straightforward answers to my question. It sounds like the process is not as laborious as I feared, and it's possible I can potentially salvage some memories (and stop moving with a milk crate full of computers).
posted by Otis the Lion at 11:51 AM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Otis the Lion at 11:51 AM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Once you pull out the drives I encourage you to find any children you know who want to pull them apart for funsies.
The little magnets inside make *great* fridge magnets.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:35 PM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
The little magnets inside make *great* fridge magnets.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 4:35 PM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Once the data is recovered, don't leave it on an old drive; back it up. Old drives have old lubrication and tend to fail. Also, they're so small they're not that great for storage. get a backup plan where there's a copy of your data online.
The magnets from full size drives will scratch the fridge, but are strong and useful for, stuff.
posted by theora55 at 4:54 PM on July 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
The magnets from full size drives will scratch the fridge, but are strong and useful for, stuff.
posted by theora55 at 4:54 PM on July 31, 2022 [3 favorites]
The magnets from full size drives will scratch the fridge
Not if you cover them in gaffer tape, which also gives you the opportunity to add a little pinch tab for pulling them off the fridge with.
Repurposed hard drive magnets are more than strong enough to hold quite thick wads of paperwork onto a fridge and keep it there when the wind blows, unlike the pissweak excuses for magnets usually sold for that purpose, and without some form of grab handle they can be quite hard to shift.
posted by flabdablet at 7:51 PM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
Not if you cover them in gaffer tape, which also gives you the opportunity to add a little pinch tab for pulling them off the fridge with.
Repurposed hard drive magnets are more than strong enough to hold quite thick wads of paperwork onto a fridge and keep it there when the wind blows, unlike the pissweak excuses for magnets usually sold for that purpose, and without some form of grab handle they can be quite hard to shift.
posted by flabdablet at 7:51 PM on July 31, 2022 [2 favorites]
I worked for a few weeks at a computer recycling facility and I can confirm that is exactly what we do with old laptops: remove the storage inside, physically.
posted by kschang at 5:34 AM on August 1, 2022
posted by kschang at 5:34 AM on August 1, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
I work for a hospital, and every year our facilities people do an electronics recycling day, where people can bring in old TVs, printers, computers, etc. Computers get disposed of same as our work computers, which should be pretty secure. You might have something like that around where you live.
posted by Spike Glee at 9:53 AM on July 31, 2022 [4 favorites]