Topic: Disposing of a PC tower

[BlackLight]

Best way to do this? The tower's power supply crapped out on me several years ago, and as I recall, there was a virus on it at the time that I was getting ready to work on getting rid of. Whatever data was on there, I've either backed up or gotten by without for this whole time. I just bought a refurbished PC tower, so now the old one is just taking up space. I assume that anyone who bothers to replace the power supply can go in and access what I had on there, and I know just throwing it out isn't cool. Any ideas?

[Prime]

Check out http://www.dban.org/ and download Darick's Boot and Nuke. It'll wipe your drive so no one can read the data on it. Then take the tower to an electronics recycling center.

[BlackLight]

Can't download anything to it because it won't boot up because the power supply's dead.

[Torgo]

Can't download anything to it because it won't boot up because the power supply's dead.

Can't you just take out the harddrive and then take it to a recycling center?

[DocSavage]

hdd's are simple to remove.  In many cases, you don't even need a phillips..

In the worst case (Like the screws being stripped), put it next to another desktop and use it to boot the drive.

[BlackLight]

Can't you just take out the harddrive and then take it to a recycling center?

Will give this a try.

[POE-Bot Activated!]

I use the dban program all the time at work and if you have another computer and an USB drive, you can put the program on the drive, have the computer you want discarded boot from the USB drive and it should (usually) run the program from there.

You can also use the old fashion way of security enforcement and just smash it with a hammer.

[DocSavage]

I use the dban program all the time at work and if you have another computer and an USB drive, you can put the program on the drive, have the computer you want discarded boot from the USB drive and it should (usually) run the program from there.

You can also use the old fashion way of security enforcement and just smash it with a hammer.

It's how they do it in the CIA. 

Erase the drive, then take a sledgehammer to it.

[BobbyR]

You can also use the old fashion way of security enforcement and just smash it with a hammer.

I threw out some towers and that is exactly what I did. After letting them soak overnight in a bucket of water.

[BlackLight]

Tried downloading the dban program, but the file format (.iso) on it is such that I need to get Windows to search the web for another program that will run it. Is anyone better than any other?