Laptop disposal

[betterfromabove]

Hi,

Does anyone know of any reputable disposal companies in London (preferably, West) for a several laptops? Even any companies that will pick up?

Any thoughts on the best way to deal with the disk, in terms of security??

Cheers
BFA

[Milo Minderbinder]

I'd take the hard drives out and then offer the laptops on Ebay for spares
Take a look - theres quite an active market there. Depending on the model you could get £50 or more for each. Once broken apart the plastics alone are worth that, and then theres value in the motherboard as a spare....

regarding the hard drives
use this program to nuke the data
Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing (http://www.dban.org/)
then either take them apart and scratch the platter
or you could just stick a drill through the middle in several places

FWIW most non-ferrous metal recyclers are geared up to shredding hard drives

[mike-wsm]

I usually take my old machines to that High Street pawn shop. They pay about 25 per cent of new price.

Back in the bad old days of hard drive I used to put the machine back to showroom condition by deleting My Documents and reloading the Windows dvd. If you're worried do a total format. Modern machines have factory reset which clears all data.

There are fancy ways of recovering data from an erased hard drive but it is unlikely that your data would be sufficiently valuable to justify the cost. Three cycles of total format would defeat even Cheltenham's finest.

[TOWTEAMBASE]

If you have a compaq presario CQ61 PM me, I need a motherboard if your selling, cheers

[vulcanised]

I'm wondering what to do with my old Toshiba Satellite laptop.

It's all in good order except that both batteries are deceased. I would have thought the batteries would be really cheap for an old machine, but they're not. So what to do? Don't like throwing good stuff out.

[Pelikal]

vulcanised, would it be a 2100? I'm looking for a wlan card and an additional memory module. Battery on mine is effed as well. Just a thought. PM me?

[Bushfiva]

There are quite a few battery rebuilding services around now: it's good business. You may want to check it out. I've had a Thinkpad and an Acer done, and did a Casio myself.

[Milo Minderbinder]

"Three cycles of total format would defeat even Cheltenham's finest."

who are you trying to kid? I routinely recover stuff from drives like that.
Now if you actually completely zero the drive using a diagnostic tool then yes, it becomes much much harder - but I don't think you're talking about that are you?
Recovering data from a formatted drive is easy. Even one that has been formatted multiple times
Thats why I suggested using DBAN - using that makes it almost impossible to recover

[mike-wsm]

Not for the faint-hearted. I scrapped one cutting it open, you need to know where that electronics card is. Might have had more success on number two, or perhaps number three.

Thanks Milo. I think I'll crawl off to bed. :ok:

[Milo Minderbinder]

Vulcanised

the older model batteries are often more expensive because the design is superceded and no longer in production. Having said that, its often the case that when you buy "new" old model batteries they've decayed to the point they no longer work anyway......

what model is it? I have contacts with a couple of battery importers and may be able to point you in the right direction

[stumpey]

Hi.

How about donating it to your local special needs school?

The kids, may not be the "Full schilling", but the more able ones will study IT, the school WILL be short of money and eventually it WILL be properly disposed of.

Go on, help em out. They don't bite, well not most of them, and any way, as a visitor you shouldn't be allowed that close to them.:}

[vulcanised]

Thanks for the replies.

Can't get to it right this minute but I'm fairly sure it's a 4600.