Making a laptop safe for disposal

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
How do you dispose of an old laptop?

I tried to fire up an old Lenovo of mine which I've not used for a couple of years, maybe more.

The pilot lights came on, but in all other respects there was no one home.

It's a heavy old lump, running Vista which is dreadful even by Microsoft's standards, so no point in repairing it, not least because something better specced new is only about £250.

Before consigning it to the recycling bin, I wanted to be sure it couldn't be fired up and any data stolen.

Chances of someone doing that are very low, but they will be even lower if it's impossible.

Attacking it with a lump hammer didn't appeal, so I plonked it in the kitchen sink and submerged it in water for about 10 minutes.

During this process the pilot lights flickered for a few seconds then went off.

I reckon I can now sleep easy.

What do you do to a laptop to make it safe for disposal?
 

cosmicbike

Perhaps This One.....
Moderator
Location
Egham
I remove the hard drives on mine, but don't do any more than that. They go to the WEE bin at the local dump.
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Could you have tried the harddrive out in something else. If it worked, use it as external storage.

RAM destroyed as well I take it?
 

r04DiE

300km a week through London on a road bike.
Download a copy of DBAN https://dban.org - and use it to make a bootable USB or CD.
Boot from that, and it’ll give you options to wipe/overwrite everything on the disk.
^^This.
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Tape a few candles and an old alarm clock to it and leave it outside the local MP's house. The RLC will blow it up for free for you.
Why do they all need a visible timer?

Local mp's aren't worth going to that amount of trouble though.
 
Top Bottom