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
(63,544 posts)What does the organization say to do?
QED
(3,121 posts)I'll email them and ask. I didn't see any info on their website about this.
https://azstrut.org/
QED
(3,121 posts)They will wipe the drives.
OLDMDDEM
(2,346 posts)QED
(3,121 posts)They refurbish them..
https://azstrut.org/
OLDMDDEM
(2,346 posts)bucolic_frolic
(49,158 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
(18,737 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.