Wipe Hard Drives

For goodness sake, if they are good working laptops DO NOT send to a landfill. There are other options.

On some I reset or re-installed widows 10 and put some old game packs I had on them. (card games, slot games, and domino games, and the Windows 7 game pack from Winaero..)
The local senior centers and nursing homes in the area were glad to get them. It gives their residents who are still able something to do without internet access. Until I became unable to no longer do it, I distributed them to senior facilities in all the towns around here.
Others, I gave to shut-in seniors still living at home. I contacted local churches to find them. They spend hours playing these off-line games daily.

Likewise, I installed Linux Mint on a few. The local library was glad to expand their bank of public computers.

To anyone wanting these old gamepacks to use for this purpose, I will be glad to share them.

Del 80 said:

Well, I have basically finished with W10, so I have six laptops that are destined for landfill.......the thing is, how best to completely wipe everything off them ? (maybe this should be in the W10 forum).......any advice welcomed......

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I always remove the drives from old desktops and laptops and either keep them for various purposes or drill a sizeable hole thru them and take them to electronif reckycling.

Del 80 said:

Ok......just to clarify, ALL six laptops are running W10.....all up to date......I want to wipe EVERYTHING off them, before either destroying them, or donating them........doesn't using reset re-install the OS ?.......

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It's not possible to completely wipe a drive containing the OS from within the OS.

There are utilities for doing it from a bootable USB flash drive. DBAN is one. I've never used one.

I suppose that you could revert the laptops to factory condition, and then use a Windows utility like CCleaner to wipe free space. as far as I understand it, that should leave you with the OS only, with all personal stuff gone. Whether that would prevent the NSA (US National Security Agency) from recovering your data, I don't know.

Note that wiping the drives will take a long time, even if you only overwrite them once. (Multiple overwrites are recommended if you're serious about making the data unrecoverable.)

My preferred method for erasing a drive is an 8lb (3.6kg) sledge hammer.

glasskuter said:

There are other options.

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There are.

1. Put it on a shelf and let it sit there
2. Put it on a shelf and let it sit there
3. Put it on a shelf and let it sit there

destroyimg the disc itself negates the need to wipe it.