Anyone have a suggestion on where to sell an old laptop?
It's still functional. I see people on Craigslist who offer to buy used and even broken electronics, so I assume I can get a few bucks for it. (Not expecting big money, of course.)
Just checking to see if anyone on TT had suggestions, before turning to the unknown people on Craigslist.
Thanks!
Comments ... #
I've sold a bunch of stuff on craigslist, although not electronics. I've had really good luck.
And I still have a posting for a sofa, loveseat and chair, if anyone's interested!
Personally I would recycle the device at one of the periodic electronics recycling events, mom2. No matter how well you think you scrub a hard drive, a skilled person could conceivably glean all sorts of personal information from the machine.
Deleting files does not make the information disappear; this just erases the location information of the data. It appears to be "gone" to the operating system, but all of the data is still there and it can can be recovered by knowledgeable hackers.
I would be leery of letting a family member using my old laptop, let alone a complete stranger, unless I removed the hard drive or used data destruction software. Of course, then the computer would be useless without the backup operating system and software disks to reload programs.
posted by historymike on Jan 16, 2013 at 12:04:34 pm #
If you delete all the junk you can find a program to scrub the empty space, will write 1's and 0's to the empty space overwriting the information, would take real forensic software to recover anything at that point. Think Malware Bytes has a secure shredder in it program, or Spybot does for sure. It just depends on what you had on there.
posted by Linecrosser on Jan 16, 2013 at 01:37:20 pm #
Thanks for the tips, everyone.
There was never anything particularly private or sensitive on it. Was mostly used by the kids. Unless someone can figure out a way to use my daughter's GirlsGoGames.com user history for nefarious purposes, I'm not terribly worried about security.
Stooks - sending you a PM now.
Annie - good to see you back around TT. Was just thinking of you, because I received an e-mail from you this morning.
(Well, it has your name on it, but it was obviously spam.)
Hi Mom2. Sorry about the spam. I learned about it after I left the house this a.m. -- I've got some work to do when I get home!
Have you tried selling it on Ebay? Craigslist would be less headache in some ways and might get you more money for the laptop. Or have you thought about donating it? or looked into it? Would give you tax refund/benefits and could be doing something good at the same time.
posted by EvilFoodie on Jan 17, 2013 at 04:43:00 am #
FWIW. If you want to truly wipe a drive clean, use Dariks Boot and Nuke. Dban.org.
FWIW. If you want to truly wipe a drive clean, use Dariks Boot and Nuke. Dban.org.
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