Old laptops

[Olaf Hart]

Cleaning out the study, I have a collection of old laptops from my pre apple times.
Old compaqs, dells, toshiba that used to run Windows.
Charged them up, they start up and seem to run.
Should I take out hard discs first or can I safely dump or recycle them as they are?

[Orestes Munn]

Cleaning out the study, I have a collection of old laptops from my pre apple times.
Old compaqs, dells, toshiba that used to run Windows.
Charged them up, they start up and seem to run.
Should I take out hard discs first or can I safely dump or recycle them as they are?

Same problem and at least one of ours has my wife's clinical work on it. I have taken out HDs in the past and destroyed them. When I get back to work, I can ask the local IT guys what they do.

[LarryHoward]

Cleaning out the study, I have a collection of old laptops from my pre apple times.
Old compaqs, dells, toshiba that used to run Windows.
Charged them up, they start up and seem to run.
Should I take out hard discs first or can I safely dump or recycle them as they are?

Same problem and at least one of ours has my wife's clinical work on it. I have taken out HDs in the past and destroyed them. When I get back to work, I can ask the local IT guys what they do.

Here is what our IT guys have us do prior to travelling out of the country. copied from their instructions.

This way, you preserve the operating system and installed software. Does requier you to remove all user documents/files that contain your data. You can then donate teh computer to a school or non profit knowing your personal data is gone.



- Delete all unwanted files (all your documents, etc)
- Install CCleaner. I use version 4.0.0. Don’t let it update, I’m unsure of the newer versions. \\ga111.dtbcorp.local\Software-Public\CCleaner
- Run CCleaner to remove all temporary files on the system.
- Run CCleaner tool “drive wiper” set to free space only. This will scrub the free space on the drive making the deleted data unrecoverable. Use 3 pass mode.