Recycling laptops
I have 3 old laptops that I want to donate to an organization run for high school tech nerds. These machines are between 8 & 15 years old. What should I do with them before donating? Should I reformat the hard drive? If so, how do I do that?
Or should I just remove the hard drive completely?

mahatmakanejeeves
(66,828 posts)What does the organization say to do?
QED
(3,187 posts)I'll email them and ask. I didn't see any info on their website about this.
https://azstrut.org/
QED
(3,187 posts)They will wipe the drives.
OLDMDDEM
(2,760 posts)QED
(3,187 posts)They refurbish them..
https://azstrut.org/
OLDMDDEM
(2,760 posts)bucolic_frolic
(52,461 posts)Randoming out the data, replacing it with zeros. But some say they can still recover data.
Personally I'd be ok with DoD (Dept of Defense) erasure, then I'd probably pass a strong magnet from an old hard drive over it 99 times. As to whether it would still operate ....?
But then I've never disposed of a hard drive. They simply wore out from exhaustion.
canetoad
(19,516 posts)To make hard drives unrecoverable.
https://diskwipe.org/ This is one of them. You can search for others but beware the ones that say "Free download" or similar. There will be a catch such as disabled features. You need to find true Freeware.