How to best to dispose of my dead laptop?

June 26, 2008 9:09 PM

My Powerbook is dead. What do I do with it now? My priorities: 1) I want it gone 2) I want my data to stay safe 3) I want to make some money

My 2004 Powerbook G4 bit the dust a few months ago, and I've since replaced it. I'm moving now, and can't let it's hulking carcass sit around any longer. There's still data on it, but it's fried and won't even turn on (something about the internal power I think). Can you give me advice on what pieces I can sell, what I can take apart, and generally what I should do?

posted by rzperllian to technology (5 answers total)

My immediate thought is to remove the hard drive and eBay it as-is for parts.

yes, ebay is a verb
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 9:58 PM on June 26, 2008

Pop the hard drive out.

Ebay or craigslist the caracas.

_{craigslist is also a verb}

Take the money from the sale and buy a USB enclosure for the hard drive and use it for backups, etc.
posted by Ookseer at 10:09 PM on June 26, 2008

agreed. Take out the HDD, completely destroy it with a hammer on concrete and your data will be gone forever.
posted by gen at 10:27 PM on June 26, 2008

Those USB enclosures go for as low as $10, so depending the price difference for machines with or without a drive (and how much time you're willing to spend), you could buy an enclosure, wipe the drive with some multi-pass erase utility, then sell the machine with the drive.

But it probably makes more sense to keep the drive as Ookseer describes.

In the past I've been able to get a pretty decent price for these on eBay, even being sold as "broken - for parts only".
posted by dixie flatline at 11:45 PM on June 26, 2008

Thanks for the advice! I took the HD out using instructions I found here, and now have the rest of it listed on E-bay. Taking the HD out required buying a Torx wrench, but it was otherwise surprisingly straight forward. We'll see what I get for it now...
posted by rzperllian at 4:35 PM on June 28, 2008