Selling old laptop for parts

[Sparklfairy]

Rather than it go to landfill, if I sold an old broken laptop on ebay for parts, what do I need to know security wise? Do I just need to remove the hard drive? It won't switch on so I can't wipe the machine, but I don't want anyone having access to my old files and programs.

I'm normally pretty tech savvy but I'm a bit clueless with this and don't want to make an expensive mistake!

Just remove the hard drive and make sure you've not left a camera SD card in, or a dvd in the reader (if it has one) before selling on.
Hit the hard drive with a hammer a few times if you're going to throw it away - or if it's a reasonable capacity, then put it in a caddy and use it for backup.

Incidentally, much newer machines may possibly have the hard "drive" soldered in place but this won't be the case for you if it's an older laptop.

As you may know, it may be possible to recover "deleted" data from hard disks. This can be made very difficult by overwriting the whole disk with other data or a "secure wipe" makes data recovery effectively impossible with repeated overwrites. There are programs that will do this, but they will require the disk to be inserted in, or attached to a functioning computer.

If you are tech savvy, as you say, you may be able swap the disk temporarily into another laptop and wipe it securely with DBAN, allowing you to sell the laptop intact. I'm not sure how much difference that makes when it's sold non functioning.

Alternatively, if you have, or can borrow a disk caddy it can be securely wiped in that.

With all due respect, that's why I suggested removing the disk was the best security guarantee.
Interestingly, the free version of DBAN won't touch Solid State Drives.

Yeah I think it's best to sell without the hard drive at all and just destroy it separately, rather than faff about trying to wipe information. I just wondered whether maybe there would be traces left on the machine that I didn't know about or something. Thanks, this is really helpful.

I may come back in a few years and ask for help disposing of my new (current) laptop with the new style hard drive @Mutunus

You're welcome