I need to get rid of my old desktop PC. It never gets used and its taking up space. Ideally I’d like to get a few quid from it, but it is old…

Would I stand a chance getting any cash for it by splitting it and selling for spares? Hard drive is a reasonable size and works fine, case and PSU are fine, as is DVD read/writer. Its just motherboard and graphics card that will be dated.

If so, what’s the best way of clearing the hard-drive?
I’ve copied everything off it I might ever want (and the rest).

Or should I just stick the whole thing on ebay and hope, in which case I need a Windows reinstall and I’ve no idea where the original XP disc might be.

Or give up and go for freecycle….

Take the HDD out and smash it with a big hammer.

Give the rest away.

Dban + freecycle

If its XP then its old and worth 4/5’s of bugger all.

Freecycle unless you know of some deserving person to donate to.

What sort of spec are we talking?

DBAN for secure wipe. More secure than a hammer (but less fun). Speaking from personal experience, HDD casings are surprisingly resilient.

There were at least a dozen PC’s in a storeroom at work recently, all running XP. Every one went for scrap, the HDD’s to be securely destroyed, the rest just broken up.
We probably get more for the scrap value of our used printing plates, ‘cos they’re pure aluminium.

FTFY

No.

For all practical purposes they’re probably both “secure enough” for home users disposing to landfill.

But for highly sensitive data, DBAN can destroy data to US MoD standards (and beyond). A hammer will render the drive useless to your average joe (so long as you take it to bits first and don’t just dent the casing), but could potentially leave areas of salvageable data at least partially recoverable in the hands of professional recovery specialists.

Best route of all would be a secure destruction facility which can grind the platters to powder. After DBANing. (-: In the grand scheme of things, a hammer is a relatively poor method of destroying data.

Like I said though, either way is probably good enough for most home users. An opportunist isn’t going to attempt data recovery, they’ll just move on to another disk.

Spec of the machine?

Unless it was a particularly high spec custom machine back in the day, it really is likely only to be worth giving away. Though if it’s an ok spec, and it all still works ok, someone may still want it to install Ubuntu on, or even hack it and run OSX (if compatible parts are fitted).

If it’s got a Gigabyte motherboard, and running a Core2 processor, I’d take it off your hands and turn it into an OSX based home server.

How old? If less than 10 what spec is the motherboard , graphics card and memory…I may be interested…

I’d like to see a professional data recovery specialist recover anything from my last laptop, the hard disc itself was like confetti after a few minutes with a hammer.

It seems a shame really but these old computers seem to be so obsolete and worthless, even more so withou a functioning hard drive.

It seems a shame really but these old computers seem to be so obsolete and worthless, even more so withou a functioning hard drive.

You mark my words, they will be worth money one day. Mainly to blokes with beards.

I’d like to see a professional data recovery specialist recover anything from my last laptop, the hard disc itself was like confetti after a few minutes with a hammer.

Thats why they charge so much!!

DBAN or one of the other linux tools will leave it empty (as in really empty) and reusable.

dickbarton, ygm

dban is completely pointless. multiple passes have been shown a gazillion times to be redundant. try writing zero’s to it once with dd and ask Vogon to recover it. They won’t take the job on.

I’m not sure how you can say it’s “pointless” when it’s (by your arguments) just as effective as another completely effective method.

try writing zero’s to it once with dd and ask Vogon to recover it. They won’t take the job on.

Ask on any hacking forum and someone will, and probably succeed.

I’m not sure how you can say it’s “pointless” when it’s (by your arguments) just as effective as another completely effective method.

Because you can get the exact same effect with a fraction of them time by just doing one pass.

try writing zero’s to it once with dd and ask Vogon to recover it. They won’t take the job on.

Ask on any hacking forum and someone will, and probably succeed.

No they won’t.

The only way of retrieving anything will be via residual magnetic scans, which rarely pick up a full file of anything. I’ve sat in front of devices used by .gov and .mil for this sort of thing.

Those hacking forums are full of eejits exchanging worthless out of data information btw.