Jim Rossman: Recycling your old PC? I’d keep the hard drive

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

This week my question comes from my own family. I had a text exchange with my brother-in-law who wrote, “We have at least one laptop that is broken, but we have information on it. What do we do?”

They actually had two old laptops, and they want to take them in for recycling. He was right to ask what to do about the information on the old drives.

What do you do with a computer when you’re ready for it to head to another owner or to the electronics recycler?

If the computer still turns on, you can open Settings, then System, then Recovery and then ask Windows to “Reset this PC.”

Then choose “Remove everything,” and “clean the drive.”

Once this begins, there’s no going back, so make sure you have all the files saved off that you want to save.

If you have a laptop that is dead, you’ll want to open it up and remove the hard drive, which is what I told my brother-in-law to do. He was a little worried it would be a hassle, but I told him with the right screwdriver it would take less than 5 mintues – especially if he didn’t have to worry about putting things back together.

He got the back off the laptop. I forgot to tell him some laptops have captive screws, which means they don’t come all the way out when you unscrew them.

When all the screws are loose, you just pry up the bottom cover and you should expose the internals. My brother-in-law did that, and he wasn’t sure where the hard drive was so he sent a photo.

His laptop had a m.2 solid state drive, which looks a bit like a RAM chip.

I circled the drive and told him to peel back a sticker on top to expose a screw that needed to come out. Once the screw is removed, the drive pops up and you just pull it out of its socket.

If you’re unsure how to open your computer or which component is the hard drive, do a search at a site like ifixit.com or look to YouTube for advice on how to take apart your specific model.