[themarinos]

Originally Posted by Caymus

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. When I was working, I would remove the drives and put them in one of the hydraulic presses at work.

Try Best Buy or Staples to see if they recycle them

[roguesearcher]

Originally Posted by PoolBrews

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.

....and finish the job with a hammer...

[Dust Bunny]

RrEMOVE HDPUT IT IN A BUCKET OF BLEACH OR BATTERY ACID OVERNIGHT -YOUR DONE

[Topspinmo]

Originally Posted by Caymus

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. When I was working, I would remove the drives and put them in one of the hydraulic presses at work.

When I had my stump grinder it made quick work of it. Now I remove hard drive and memory cards smash them. I would never take it to some the says they destroy them if I done any online transactions.