Best method for getting rid of old computer

Take the hard drive out and smash it. Recycle the rest.

Thermite is my method of choice.

You can get a few "clangs" out of an old HDD as a "steel" target.

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You can run the drive's neodymium magnet over them too if you want.

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Is that proven to do anything useful?

This was what I wrote last time the question of disposing of hard drives came up:

After zeroing the drive if possible, cut the ribbon cables, tear off the heads, scratch the shite out of the platters, and bend those frickers with a pair of pliers until they turn no more. Remove and keep the crazy powerful magnet because "Yeah Bitch, Magnets!". Remove controller board and dispose of separately.

Seriously, the magnets are fun and useful. Stick them on a fridge and ask people to fetch that magnet for you. Use them as a stud finder and to retrieve tiny screws you drop.

Use FDE on every drive so you never have to think about data leakage. This will give peace of mind if you're unable to zero the drive before RMA'ing or getting rid of it. The main reason is to protect against theft, assuming your laptop isn't stolen while sleeping, and no one does the Seinfeld Frogger routine on your sleeping desktop computer.

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A bullet is easier and more fun.

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I don't fire guns inside my house or even in my backyard, so there's that. Besides, my way saves the magnet, which is a barrel of monkeys as previously described.

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What's the best method of getting rid of old computers

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If you want to recycle the old parts and are in the BR area there is CARC downtown that takes old computers and electronics. If you are elsewhere there are likely similar computer recycling places, you'll just have to look them up. Most places like this I believe do complete wipes on any drives they get, but if you have legitimately sensitive data on there I'd be safe and either physically destroy it as previously mentioned or get the software called DBAN that is a free bootable disk formatter.

Drive encryption also helps, ie BitLocker or TrueCrypt. Probably not worth the effort for an old PC sitting in a closet though.