Originally Posted by Caymus (Post 2348864)

What is the safest way to dispose of non-working laptops that may contain financial data on hard drives? Can computers shops be trusted? Don't want to get in a situation like a "certain politician's" son did.:smiley: When I was working, I would remove the drives and put them in one of the hydraulic presses at work.:smiley:

Originally Posted by PoolBrews (Post 2348869)

Wiping your hard drive on a Windows machine:

1) Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Recovery > Reset PC.
2) Select Remove everything, and then Remove files and clean the drive.
3) Click Next, Reset, and then Continue.

As long as you select the "clean the drive" option there will be nothing recoverable left on the drive. It takes a while, but it overwrites all data portions of the drive.

No need to physically destroy the drive, and it can be reused.

Originally Posted by Caymus (Post 2348864)

What is the safest way to dispose of non-working laptops that may contain financial data on hard drives? Can computers shops be trusted? Don't want to get in a situation like a "certain politician's" son did.:smiley: When I was working, I would remove the drives and put them in one of the hydraulic presses at work.:smiley: