How do I dispose of my old laptop?

[Alysser]

The guys at CDO helped me destroy a hard drive. Several drops, drilling through the drive, and hitting it with a sledge hammer destroyed it.

My info tech professor told us to do this, says there are programs that can revert a reformat. Not sure how true that is though.

[Karen]

It depends on the nature of the reformat.

If you just want to destroy the hard drive, that's easy enough, open up the computer, use a hammer if ya want, and just take the hard drive apart. All the data is on a little platter - scratch it up and it's toast.

[Catty1]

There are programs that can recover "deleted" files from a reformatted drive. I have one and have had to use it for clients. It works great - but not every person on the street is going to have it!

(My most recent successful use of it resulted in the hard drive, computer tower and my 1 terrabyte backup drive being taken by the RCMP due to illegal photos that were recovered. I called the police...they said I would get my backup drive back...I hope so!)