<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;">There are multiple organization that bring old computers back to life and donate them to entities that have need for computing but at a very low complexity (senior centers for email correspondence, …). <div><br></div><div>Rather than frying your computers or destroying the disks plse consider taking the effort of wiping the disc clean and donating your old computer to one of these up-cycling groups. I bet there are many very poor people in our rural areas and in the rest of the world who would be happy to get your discarded computer.<div><br></div><div>Stay well,</div><div>Olga<br><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Feb 20, 2023, at 3:00 PM, Ted Kochanski <tedpkphd@gmail.com> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div><div dir="ltr">If you bake a computer in your oven -- I doubt that any recycler would want to get the remnants from you<div>There are plenty of things inside the computer and even inside the Hard drive not compatible with that temperature</div><div><br></div><div>If all you want to do is destroy the computer -- take the cord coming from the power adapter to the computer and cut it -- then cut the cord on the other side of the power adapter so that the power adapter is not connected. Now just splice the cords together -- don't worry about the polarity</div><div>Now plug the computer into the wall and stand back -- the 120 VAC applied to the computer will fritz many if not all of the semiconductors -- leaving a totally non functional smoking heap of stuff</div><div><br></div><div>The data might still be on the disk platters of the Hard Drive but without disassembling the drive and remounting the platters on a new spindle with new heads there is no way to get to it</div><div><br></div><div>Taking a drill and drilling through the hard drive is equally as effective</div><div><br></div><div>But --why bother?</div><div><br></div><div>Ted</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 2:05 PM Larry Wittig <<a href="mailto:9423lew@gmail.com">9423lew@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif">If you're going to bake, as I suggested,it might be good to first remove the PCB.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 1:59 PM Larry Wittig <<a href="mailto:9423lew@gmail.com" target="_blank">9423lew@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif">One easy way to erase the HDD is to bake it in your oven -- say 400 degrees F for 1 hour.</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 1:09 PM Ted Kochanski <<a href="mailto:tedpkphd@gmail.com" target="_blank">tedpkphd@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">All,<div><br></div><div>It all depends on what is the sensitivity of the stuff on the disk -- if it is National Security stuff -- then crushing or grinding, melting, etc is what you to make sure nothing can be recovered</div><div>I we are talking bank accounts, and such that is far too too much effort for the reduction of risk -- there are commercial programs which do a fairly good job</div><div><br></div><div>for example the now Infamous Bleachbit</div><div>from the wikipedia article</div><div>BleachBit is a free and open-source disk space cleaner, privacy manager, and computer system optimizer. The BleachBit source code is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.<br><br>History<br>BleachBit was first publicly released on 24 December 2008 for Linux systems.[3] The 0.2.1 release created some controversy[4] by suggesting Linux needed a registry cleaner.<br><br>Version 0.4.0 introduced CleanerML,[5] a standards-based markup language for writing new cleaners. </div><div>On May 29, 2009, BleachBit version 0.5.0 added support for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.[6] </div><div>On September 16, 2009, version 0.6.4 introduced command-line interface support.[7]<br><br>BleachBit is available for download through its website and the repositories of many Linux distributions.</div><div><table style="font-size: 12.32px; border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); border-spacing: 3px; background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); margin: 0.5em 0px 0.5em 1em; padding: 0.2em; clear: right; line-height: 1.5em; width: 22em; font-family: sans-serif;"><tbody><tr><td style="vertical-align:top"><span><a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.bleachbit.org/" style="color:rgb(51,102,204);text-decoration-line:none;background:url("") 100% 50%/0.857em no-repeat;padding-right:1em" target="_blank"><br>www.bleachbit.org</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br>Features<br></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div>Identifying and removing Web cache, HTTP cookies, URL history, temporary files log files and Flash cookies for Firefox, Opera, Safari, APT, Google Chrome</div><div>Removing unused localizations (also called locale files) which are translations of software</div><div>Shredding files and wiping unallocated disk space to minimize data remanence</div><div>Wiping unallocated disk space to improve data compression ratio for disk image backups</div><div>Vacuuming Firefox's SQLite database which suffers fragmentation</div><div>Command line interface for scripting automation and headless operation</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><table style="font-size: 12.32px; border: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); border-spacing: 3px; background-color: rgb(248, 249, 250); margin: 0.5em 0px 0.5em 1em; padding: 0.2em; clear: right; line-height: 1.5em; width: 22em; font-family: sans-serif;"><tbody><tr><th scope="row" style="vertical-align:top;text-align:left;white-space:nowrap">Written in</th><td style="vertical-align:top"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)" title="Python (programming language)" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">Python</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" style="vertical-align:top;text-align:left;white-space:nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system" title="Operating system" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">Operating system</a></th><td style="vertical-align:top"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows" title="Microsoft Windows" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">Microsoft Windows</a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS" title="MacOS" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">macOS</a><br><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux" title="Linux" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">Linux</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" style="vertical-align:top;text-align:left;white-space:nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_size" title="File size" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">Size</a></th><td style="vertical-align:top">11.5-12.2 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte" title="Megabyte" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">MB</a> (Windows)</td></tr><tr><th scope="row" style="vertical-align:top;text-align:left;white-space:nowrap">Available in</th><td style="vertical-align:top">64 languages<sup id="m_-8386608909505707490m_3767864098514526084m_-4231384344192402697gmail-cite_ref-2" style="line-height:1;unicode-bidi:isolate;white-space:nowrap;font-size:9.856px"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BleachBit#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">[2]</a></sup></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" style="vertical-align:top;text-align:left;white-space:nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_categories#Categorization_approaches" title="Software categories" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">Type</a></th><td style="vertical-align:top"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_cleaner" title="Disk cleaner" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">Disk cleaner</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" style="vertical-align:top;text-align:left;white-space:nowrap"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_license" title="Software license" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">License</a></th><td style="vertical-align:top"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License" title="GNU General Public License" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:none" target="_blank">GNU General Public License</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" style="vertical-align:top;text-align:left;white-space:nowrap">Website</th><td style="vertical-align:top"><span><a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.bleachbit.org/" style="text-decoration-line:none;color:rgb(51,102,204);background:url("") 100% 50%/0.857em no-repeat;padding-right:1em" target="_blank">www.bleachbit.org</a></span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div><br></div><div>Ted</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 12:30 PM Edward Lipman <<a href="mailto:edward.lipman@gmail.com" target="_blank">edward.lipman@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">For $39 I'd use my own hammer!<br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 9:51 AM <<a href="mailto:jjrudy1@comcast.net" target="_blank">jjrudy1@comcast.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><div lang="EN-US"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">FYI<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">A friend has two OLD laptops. One with Windows XP, the other Windows 7. I called both Staples and Best Buy both of which will take them (and a lot of other stuff) at no cost. However it does not include wiping the disk. Staples offers that service @$29 each, and Best Buy @39 each. Neither could explain to me what a full erase means (for all I know they may open the case and use a hammer).<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">John Rudy<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">781-861-0402<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">781-718-8334 cell<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">13 Hawthorne Lane<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Bedford MA<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><a href="mailto:jjrudy1@comcast.net" target="_blank">jjrudy1@comcast.net</a><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span id="cid:1866fdd7f714cff311"><image001.png></span><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div></div>===============================================<br>
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