How Do You Safely Get Rid Of An Old Computer?
• Retrieve your personal data. Copy it to a USB Stick or External Hard Drive. • Remove all personal data from the computer. Just deleting it is not good enough, as it does not destroy the data. Choose an option below. Depending on the option, you may wish to completely wipe the hard drive before proceeding. One may wish to also physically remove the hard drive as well, but have caution when removing parts of the computer! • Clean it with compressed air. • Add an extra hard drive or two (depending on the size of the old one) and install a basic operating system (such as Ubuntu) and set it up as a small file server for your house. • Keep it as a backup. Consider reviving it with Linux. • Attempt to sell it. You might be surprised to discover that someone out there will actually pay for your old bucket of bits. Hardware from the early 90s and 80s may be considered “vintage”. If some of your computer’s components are working (ie: video card, memory, etc.), it would be well worth the effort
