Article by George Norman

On 10 Sep 2009

Remember the sense of joy and excitement you had when you bought a brand new, shiny and speedy computer. Remember how well and how fast it worked? You can experience those feelings again by simply purchasing a new computer. The old one is useless anyway, is as sluggish as a slug on salt (try saying that ten times fast) and is causing you to waste a lot of time. So once you buy a new computer you will want to throw the old one out. You could go all rock’n’roll on your old computer and chop it with an axe or throw it out the window – but that would not be responsible behavior. You are better off getting rid of it in a mature, responsible manner. This involves a few simple steps.

Here is what you have to do to responsibly dispose of your old computer:


Step 1. Get rid of all the data stored on your old hardware! Chances are that you will leave your 30GB hard drive behind when you get a new computer – perhaps get a 1TB hard disk instead. Before you carelessly discard your old HDD, make sure you delete all the data stored on this disk is properly deleted. Just selecting the files and hitting Delete is not enough – that data is not actually deleted; the file space is merely “deallocated” and someone could easily bring those files back to life. Only when said data is overwritten that you can say it has actually been deleted. You will need to get a 3rd party app that permanently deletes data by deleting, overwriting, deleting, overwriting, and so on until nothing can be recuperated.

Step 2. Unless you plan to donate your old computer to charity, you can try to recuperate some of your money. You can either try to sell your old computer as a whole or you could try to sell off its components (the ones that still work properly at least).

Step 3. If selling off your computer did not work, perhaps you should give that charity thing another thought. Just because your old computer does not meat your new computing requirements does not mean it couldn’t be of help to someone.

Step 4. If you do manage to sell off some components and are left with just a shell of a former computer, make sure to take the remains to a recycling center. Don’t just dump them in the garbage bin.

Step 5. Consider these two alternatives: you could keep the computer around for parts, you could repurpose it (install a lightweight Linux distro for example).

Tips and warnings
Shouting can negatively impact your hard disk’s performance – see here.
Learn how to protect your computer from overheating here.



Tags: Computer, Recycle, Dispose

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