So between my wife and I we have 4 old laptops that we'd like to recycle instead of just tossing into the trash. I know that Goodwill partners up with Dell to recycle computer equipment, as well as Best Buy will take them, but one of the computers will not power up since the powercord is broken so I can't reformat the hard drive to wipe out the information. Is there anyway to get the information off of the computer without having to buy a powercord just to turn it on once? Specifically I'm thinking of taking the hard drive out and smashing it with a hammer lol. Would that technically prevent any information from remaining on the computer?

 

take the drive out and connect it to another PC either internally or via usb adapter

https://www.google.com/search?aq=2&o...=1264&bih=1287

 

Then use this program to securely erase it

http://harddriveeraser.org/

 

You're the f*cking man! Thanks so much for the info. Going to save me A LOT of time. Big !!!

 

You could also take a drill to it. Could be fun.

 

rofl! It will not save you a lot of time Proper format can take an entire night or more to complete. 7 passes min, 35 passes recommended.

So yeah, if this is an old ancient IDE hard drive (old style pin connector)...it's useless, so catapult it

 

Noob question, is "passes" just running the formatting program multiple times? I may have to do this soon also.

 

Doop does bring up a good point if they're not going to be reused then take them out and bang dem shits with a spike bat BLAAW!

 

Single pass overwrite is fine.

Trust me.

Format /u from the C:> works, too.

 

No there are several formatting solution, from government strength, to military... the program itself would do the runs for you.

but like was recommended, you can always do an unconditional format in command prompt it still would take a few hours.

format X: /u (important substitute X for an actual drive you want to format, avoid C

I personally use this on all my security data. http://eraser.heidi.ie/

 

Awesome, thanks!