What do PC repair shops do with machines no one picks up?

Do they destroy them? Sell them? Asking for a friend.

 

My buddy owned a computer/phone repair shop for years, after a while he would usually just give the stuff away. He gifted me a projector and built me a bad ass PC to run Solidworks on for next to nothing using parts from non paying customers.

 

I can sure as shit tell you what they don’t do with them

 

Here in Portland we have Free Geek.
It's where I've donated older computers that are 5-7 years old. I pull the hard drive and give them the rest.
I've given 5 different laptops so far over time. Personal and old work ones they didn't want.
Free Geek adds a hard drive and load ubuntu, and then offer it at very low cost to those in need.

It's a good program and keeps a lot of stuff out of the landfill.

 

Sometimes they take them fishing.

 

It's a trap...

 

What you did.....I sees it.

 

What do you do with the old hard drives that you no longer use? I've got a few lying around, but don't trust myself to delete the data completely outside of a bond fire and even then, do you just throw them away?

Same goes for old cell phones.

 

That went right over my head.

 

You wipe them with bleach.

 

I found an old phone that had an SD card with some MILF boudoir pics on it.

The End.

 

Like with a cloth?

 

Yeah...a good microfiber should work well.

 

Take B&W pictures of them...

Those magnets are pretty handy. Careful with them, though. They're pretty stout.

 

Only use a little bit. It goes a long way towards cleaning things up. I hear it wipes very clean.

 

This hits close to my house. Literally.

 

What happened? I haven't seen anything on the news.

 

We are aware.

 

I've got a stack of them at the house.
You can either drill through them in 3 spots, or take a de-gausser to them (keep your watches and electronics away from the de-gausser).
This will wipe them, then you can toss them or re-use.

I had a couple of 1TB drives, that I'm going to re-use as storage, so I just need to re-format, not de-gauss.