Where can I get rid of a REALLY old computer and be sure that they'll clean the hard drive?

[willywonka]

It's soooo beyond any use - is quite literally falling apart - but I did occasionally use for online shopping so want the hard drive wiped properly. Ta ever so!

Can't advise on getting rid unfortunately, but you can easily download some software (for a few quid) from internet that completely wipes your hard drive - I had something but can't remember what it was called (not much use sorry)

just format your hardrive yourself before you get rid

Are you whanting to delete the entire hard drive including OS?

lurking as i have one too

Take your hard drive out of it and damage it physically. Then take your pc to the local dump and they'll recycle it

or ask at your local computer shop (small independednt I mean0 This is what my dh does and when he gets stuff that is beyond repair he weighs it in for scrap

I watched a programme on tv where they drove a 4x4 or something over a hard drive and crushed it, but were still able to get someones personal info off it afterwards

Washersaurus there is a lot of freeware that works just as good as paid versions just hard to find sometimes.Also if you go for paid version if the hard drive is that old may be worth just replacing the hard drive you can get them very cheap,probably cheaper than most paid versions of hard drive wipers.

DH is a self-proclaimed IT guru and helped me find software that would permanently wipe rather than overwrite the drive. It was only £3 or something silly if I remember correctly (I always go for the free/cheap option )....if only I could remember what it was....

PC is so old that we can no longer connect it to t'internet and we don't have cables that would enable us to link any external drives because it only has a floppy and our laptop uses disks. Will probably go down to the local computer shop and see what they say. Am heavily pregnant so perhaps they'll take pity on me...

My dh is a techie and he has just physically dismantled two old PCs and drilled through the hard drives to destroy them. He then took threm to the local dump. He says software alone is not enough - you have to ruin the hard disc physically so it can never be used again 1

Formatting the pc will wipe the hard drive ime.

the only way to really make it unrecoverable is to destroy the hard drive physically

There's plenty of software out there to help people recover data from hard drives that have been apparently wiped - you only wipe something off by writing over it with another file - so seriously - physical destruction is the only way to be 100% sure