I have a couple of old Dells, 300 quid as refurbs/deals a decade ago, worth anything now?…or would anyone want donated?

Also the predecessor, too slow even 10 years ago (can’t remember the spec of any of them!).

Keyboards for most but no screen.

Could you stick a big hdd in them and use them as a media pc?

I have a NAS already ta, and a PVR.

Local CoderDojo or Code Club?

They can probably stick a linux distro on and get some use out of them.

I have no use for them, and am not techie anyway (failed linux install on one!) I have a laptop and tablet.

EDIT I see – to donate, cheers

Charity?

The Turing Trust (http://turingtrust.co.uk) might want them. The organizer is a relative of Alan Turing and gave a speech about the trust at the last Turing Lecture.

I would put them on gumtree or freecycle and hopefully someone will come and collect them, and save you the hassle of taking them down the tip. 🙂

I’m disappointed Al. I’d have expected you to install them in the Eunos and develop your competitor to Googles self-driving car.

Some charities take them, secure wipe and send to developing world or community projects. Might be worth a search in your area as you usually need to drop off.

extract the gold from the circuit boards at home.

Read of a guy in india making his millions doing this.

Surely ECC will have the appropriate reception facilities at the tip? Stuff like that is usually forwarded to a charity who will then do the above and either salvage good bits or put the machine to use. Worth making a call to find out.

If you’e going to give them away with the HD intact the least I would do is hit them with Boot and Nuke. free download, just write it to disk, or you can probably put it on a USB as well.

Drill the HDD and microwave the memory to be sure

Drill the HDD and microwave the memory to be sure

Surely Nuke from Orbit is the only way to be sure…..

Take out the HD, store at home and then take the rest to the tip for recycling.

Drill the HDD and microwave the memory to be sure

DBAN the hard drive, step away from Mr Robot. (-:

These guys might take them – http://edinburghhacklab.com/

Take out the HD, store at home

What is the point of storing the HDD?

In case someone finds some expired credit card info that was used to buy something from a site that no longer exists.

Pure paranoia for the most part, DBAN is more than enough, the till receipts people throw away contain more info.

What is the point of storing the HDD?

‘cos then you know where it is, they take up next-to-no space and stops anyone accessing any data on it you’ve left behind

Is your house full of old receipts, bills and bank statements?

Local School took mine. The kids take them apart and build one super pc to take over the world 😯

With hard drives you can remove the metal plate, usually small torx screws to reveal the shiny disc inside.. Scratch the surface with a screw driver or something, and throw in some sand/grit for good measure.. It’ll never work again.

Well technically some data might be recovered but the cost would be staggering so unless you are an international arms dealer or something it won’t be worth the effort to try to read the disk.

Or Ccleaner has a built in drive wipe facility that writes zeros and ones over the whole drive, multiple times which is considered a safe wipe.

Then just bin it.

Old HDDs unless they’re tiny are just plain useful- stick a backup on it.

Just drill a hole through the HDD…..

Is your house full of old receipts, bills and bank statements?

No. I shred them 🙂