Do you just dump them or is there a more worthy solution?

There are specialist charities that take them. Should be a local one, where are you?

http://www.itforcharities.co.uk/donorinf.htm

or try Freecycle etc

Install X-Ubuntu and use for another few years?

Take a welding torch to the hard disk before it goes though… Better safe than sorry.

Install X-Ubuntu and use for another few years?

One of them has had ubuntu on it for the last couple of years or so -and had about an hours use in that time.
There’s actually 3 desktops and a laptop plus a couple of monitors etc surplus to requirements. Is there any point, or is it safe to format the disks and reinstall the operating systems on them?
Just owndering, because they’re still all reasonably capable

take the harddrive out and either drill a hole through it or chop it up somehow prior to disposing of that separately. any drive formatted and reinstalled can still have data taken off it if someone is so inclined. donate whatever else you want but not the drive.

[pedant]

Getting rid of old PC’s what?

[/pedant]

There is so much gold in the chips that companies make a fortune melting it down and making new gold items.

[pedant]

Getting rid of old PC’s what?

[/pedant]

Pah, confused myself in the attempt to avoid the pedants. Anyway M-F, your grammar leaves a bit to be desired in that sentence 😆

take the harddrive out and either drill a hole through it or chop it up somehow prior to disposing of that separately. any drive formatted and reinstalled can still have data taken off it if someone is so inclined. donate whatever else you want but not the drive.

Nobody is going to bother to get back data from a zero/random filled drive on the offchance of finding something. Simply not worth the effort + huge expense.

Seeing as OP has Ubuntu already it is just a simple case of booting from the CD, and doing something like dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/hda.

That way the people you donate it to don’t have to fork out for a new HD as well.

Wouldn’t the local primary school appreciate it. Or is there some H&S law against that.

Freecycle! I gave away a 233 mHz one a couple of years back and there was a major scrum for it.

Grind the harddrives into dust and lock the dust away in a lead-lined box 50 feet underground.

Download Killdisc secure erase and let it run overnight, unless of course you would rather beat a poor defenceless hard drive to death with a hammer… 😀

You haven’t got a 1gb stick of DDR 400 in any of those spare PC’s have you?

Boot and Nuke free download

Give the HD a military standard wipe (7 passes)

Install X-Ubuntu and use for another few years?

For what? Geeking out?

Or you could not waste your time and donate them 🙂

I was following this thread last night & as I have an old PC to get rid of I thought I’d have a go at downloading killdisk an wiping the hard drive – killdisk duly down load on to a memory stick & installed dug the old PC out and started plugging in the wires to get it running

Large green flash came out the back when I plugged it in – ooops forgot the transformer – so pc now fully disabled – I now have 2 very nice silver coasters