What do you do with broken laptops, tablets and cameras

[seriouslylong]

I'm just wondering what you do with your broken electrical items! I have had some hanging around for years which don't work and I don't want to get rid of them as I have personal information on them and photos etc!

Is there anywhere that can download the data for you and then recycle the items?

If not what do you do with yours?

Too late now, but a piece of advice: a key reason why full disk encryption is valuable on every computer you own is that it means the disk is safe to dispose of at any point, even if the computer it is enclosed on is broken. Similarly phones.

For cameras, just pull the memory card out.

You can just take the disk out for most laptops (and stick it into an external hard disk enclosure so you can plug it in to another computer to read it).

How do you do full disk encryption I have no idea I can use a laptop really well but I'm no good at the technical side

How would I find the disk to take it out? I have got an external hard drive that I use for storage so can I put the disk in there?

It might be worth seeing if there's a "repair cafe" if you live in a city, where you could take stuff along and have someone help you.

Alternatively you could teach yourself a bit on Youtube? What you need to know is the make/model of the laptop so you can google for details like: what kind of hard disk is in there so that you can get an external hard disk enclosure (sometimes called caddy) that matches it.