I have 2 Acer laptops . One has windows 7 the other windows 8 . Both are retired and not been used for 2 years.

What do I do with them as they have no dollar value. Next, how do I wipe all the porn off before throwing them away.

Tootsfriend wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 5:17 pm I have 2 Acer laptops . One has windows 7 the other windows 8 . Both are retired and not been used for 2 years.

What do I do with them as they have no dollar value. Next, how do I wipe all the porn off before throwing them away.

You can restore them to factory default through the ACER startup menu.

Tootsfriend wrote:I have 2 Acer laptops . One has windows 7 the other windows 8 . Both are retired and not been used for 2 years.

What do I do with them as they have no dollar value. Next, how do I wipe all the porn off before throwing them away.

Install Linux on them, they'll run allot smoother than with windows =)

I would recommend Mint Linux or PopOS

https://linuxmint.com/

https://pop.system76.com/

Jerry Atrick wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 5:20 pm

Tootsfriend wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 5:17 pm I have 2 Acer laptops . One has windows 7 the other windows 8 . Both are retired and not been used for 2 years.

What do I do with them as they have no dollar value. Next, how do I wipe all the porn off before throwing them away.

Give them to a school

Maybe format the ard drives first unless you feel the kids would appreciate the porn ofc

Note re formating the drive does not erase the data, it just marks the sectors as free for use. All data can be recovered with a data recovery program. To sanitaise/ wipe your drive you need to run a data sanitising program, there are a lot around eg killdisc:

https://www.killdisk.com/eraser.html


Powerful and portable software that allows you to destroy all data on Hard Disks, Solid State Disks (SSD) & USB disks and Memory Cards, excluding any possibility of deleted files and folders data recovery. Active@ KillDisk is a disk sanitation and partition eraser utility, supporting U.S. DoD 5220.22-M and more than 20 international data sanitizing standards. Licensing assumes no extra cost per erase!

This is the one time I can safely recommend a hammer to do the job best.

Why bother with all that other nonsense of wasting your day wiping or whatever? Just smashed it to bits and you're done.

ressl wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 7:45 pm This urban legend (nowadays called fake news), that you have to format or overwrite your hard-drive several times or your data can be restored, seems to be impossible to get out of people's head. Yes, it can be restored, but not without forensic technology (using a real format, not a quick format, which indeed just erases the sector tables). Seriously: if it would be so easy to store data and then overwrite it once and you can still access the original data - the hard drive manufacturers would pay you millions if they can double their capacity that easy...
It is correct that governments and some other high sensitive institutions need to overwrite a couple of times, to make sure a properly equipped secret service can not restore the data, but for the personal porn a single (real, not quick) format is completely sufficient

For personal use, when you format the hard drive and then return to 'factory default', the following happens:

- the table of content of the hard disk will be erased, not the data itself. Restoring intact data is relatively easy. But....
- the default programs (the OS, applications, bloatware, everything that was on the machine when bought new) will be re-installed on the hard disk, more or less randomly overwriting the data which was left intact after the formatting. Large parts will be overwritten. Those parts can not simply be recovered with software, because these data sectors of the hard disk have been physically overwritten.

One thing to add: SSD's constantly shift data on the hard disk around to increase performance and to evenly use different parts of the SSD to prevent wear and tear. This makes data recovery on SSD's even more difficult, because the same data might have been stored in multiple places thus overwriting old data which was never in the table of content without the user even noticing.

At the end of this process you have an old laptop which once belonged to a private person, with a disk with a new table of content and large parts of the old data overwritten by the 'restore to default process'. In theory, and also in reality, it's still possible to recover large parts of incomplete old data. But who the fuck will care to make a large effort to do this?

Large pieces of gold you protect by storing them in a large safe, but 100r notes you can just leave on the table.

SlowJoe wrote: ↑Tue May 31, 2022 7:43 pm This is the one time I can safely recommend a hammer to do the job best.

Why bother with all that other nonsense of wasting your day wiping or whatever? Just smashed it to bits and you're done.

Thanks,, Best advice so far. It shall be done.