Disposing of old computers and tablets

[Lee DeRaud]

Like others, when a computer fails, I pull the hard drive and pop it into a cheap external case to be used as a backup.

I just looked in the spares bin: I have four such drives, ranging from 512GB to 2TB. None of them have been touched since I installed them in the cases and reformatted them. And I think I gave away at least three other such lash-ups over the years, which I suspect are sitting unused in someone else's spares bin.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I think there is an old PC under the fridge that some one disposed of along our road. I am not going to start the clean up until the Sheriff has had a look.

[Rod Sheridan]

As we have been getting ready for next weeks move, Waves of old laptops, tablets etc are surfacing. How do dispose of them. Should I pull the drives on the laptops?

I put hard drives in the shop press and crush them, then go in electronic waste for recycling.

Regards, Rod

[Curt Harms]

At this point, I'd actually recommend cloud storage for backup for most people. This is actually what I do, so it's putting my money where my mouth is too.

All this talk of mechanical, spinning, drives is kind of fun. Don't discuss those much these days, they're deprecated and pretty much dead end tech. Unlike other dead tech that I still employ (optical media, records), I don't think they'll be coming back. Ultimately the form factor and power consumption of flash is superior.

There's at least one use for which mechanical hard drives are superior to flash based - video recorders or I guess any application where there is a lot of writing going on. Security cameras are constantly recording for example. I don't know that current generation flash devices would live long happy lives doing that.

[Bill Howatt]

This is one area that HDD probably holds an edge but SSDs have come a long way. They also use methods so the same cells are not used over and over while others sit untouched so a drive that is larger than really needed for the amount of data stored can last much longer. For typical computer use there is no concern about write-cycles being a problem but for the uses mentioned above it can be an issue.
Another place the HDD is better is long-term, unpowered, data retention. The SSD will lose its data bits faster (~10 years the vendors say) than the HDD will lose its magnetic bit. OTOH, SSDs are being researched and improved but I doubt much is being put into improving HDD methods these days but that's my opinion.

[Stan Calow]

Anyone have good re-uses for old out-of-date computers? I have an old dell desktop that is only used for storing an editing photos - no wifi, but a couple of laptops that still work, just not current. I recall an EE friend of mine, back in the old days, who used an obsolete computer (might have even been a Commodore 64) to automatically water his house plants - nothing else. Security stuff maybe? I'd rather re-use than recycle if they still work.

[Curt Harms]

Anyone have good re-uses for old out-of-date computers? I have an old dell desktop that is only used for storing an editing photos - no wifi, but a couple of laptops that still work, just not current. I recall an EE friend of mine, back in the old days, who used an obsolete computer (might have even been a Commodore 64) to automatically water his house plants - nothing else. Security stuff maybe? I'd rather re-use than recycle if they still work.

I think it depends on how old what you want it to do. Giving new life to old machines is a common use for Linux distros. Not all Linux distros are equal when it comes to system requirements. Some don't support 32 bit systems for instance. Until recently I had a P III 600 Mhz/512 Mb. HP desktop from around 2000 serving as a torrent server. I wanted to give a few distros that are operating on a shoe string a little help with bandwidth costs. Not all torrents are used for illegimate/illegal uses.

[Jonathan Pace]

Pull the drives. Maybe you could 'google' around for some companies who are doing things with old tech...

[Bill Howatt]

I think you will find that the number of takers is highly dependent on the age which you can interpret as specs of the machines. Places that are teaching technology to the low-income and other masses want to be able to teach the current popular software, not something that will run on an old crock. This is based on my experience trying to pass on a couple of older PCs. This doesn't mean that niche users don't exist, its just not as easy to find them.
I'll add that if you try to pass it on without a HD such that it won't run, the difficulty will increase which means that if you want to leave the OS on it, then you have to selectively wipe the data files unless you want to do a Full not Quick (in Windows terms) re-format and reload the OS.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

I think there is an old PC under the fridge that some one disposed of along our road. I am not going to start the clean up until the Sheriff has had a look.

No response from the Sheriff... looks like a good disposal site. I will clean it up next weekend.

[Lee DeRaud]

I think you will find that the number of takers is highly dependent on the age which you can interpret as specs of the machines. ...This is based on my experience trying to pass on a couple of older PCs. This doesn't mean that niche users don't exist, its just not as easy to find them.

(cough) Kev Williams (cough)

I'm not sure any computer is so old or its OS so obsolete that he doesn't have a specialized machine that won't work with anything newer.