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Where should old computers go to die?

When it comes to disposing of your old computer, whether you are selling, donating or recycling it, you're biggest concern should be any personal or sensitive information stored on it that you wouldn't want to fall into others hands.
There are several options you should consider, ranging from simple to very technical that will allow you to keep your files from being accessed or used by the new owners of your old computer.

If you're selling your computer, you may want to leave the software programs on the computer so that it's more valuable. In those cases, your best bet is to 'scrub' your individual files off the hard drive with a secure deletion program. These can be downloaded free from the internet.

A lot of people simply delete the files off their computer in the belief that this actually does remove them. The reason that you don't want to rely on this is because simply deleting files doesn't actually remove the data. When you tell Windows to 'delete' a file, it only removes it from your view and marks the space as 'free' for use by other data. If the old files are never overwritten by new files that you store on the computer (which is a completely random process), retrieving the 'deleted' files is fairly simple for a moderately technical person.

Programmes that you can download from the internet to 'scrub' your data are much more secure than 'deleting' because they immediately overwrite the space previously occupied by your files.

If you don't want to leave the programmes on the computer, you can clear out the entire hard drive with a secure wipe program such as Kill Disk. These types of programmes will completely and securely wipe your entire hard disk. Both free and pay for versions are available to download from the internet.  This is a great option for those that are only interested in donating, selling or recycling the hardware and not the software. Beware though that this can be very long process sometimes taking up to days to complete.

If you don't want to go to the effort of downloading and running a programme to scrub your hard disk, simply remove it or have it removed, before you dispose of the computer.

Finally, many people think that it's just easier to take their old computer equipment to the tip. You should never just throw an old computer away as it's filled with hazardous materials.

If you can't find a church, school or charitable organization in your local area that is willing to accept your old computer, check out sites like www.eday.co.nz  which gives details on how to dispose of old computers in an environmentally sustainable way.