For whatever reason, my big toe was giving me gyp last Saturday morning, so with my run and walk out of the question, I did something a bit more sedate…
I grabbed the redundant IT equipment that had piled up over time in the garage and took it to the local recycling centre. Not that exciting, but it had to be done.
Before setting off though, I had to make sure that everything was safe to disposed of. And this is something you should most definitely be doing, before selling or disposing of your IT hardware.
Imagine you treated yourself to a new laptop, desktop or Smartphone, and you took the old one to the recycling centre, with all the information still on there! You’re basically handing over your personal information, if it gets into the wrong hands.
So, before you get rid or sell your computer or Smartphone, it’s important that you carry out the following…
Laptop, Desktop, or iMac – The critical piece of hardware you need to remove is the storage, as this contains all your data. This will either be a traditional hard disk, Solid State Disk, or Flash storage. Once removed, the computer is then safe to be disposed of.
On the other hand, if you wanted to pass the computer on to a friend or family member, my advice would be to restore the computer back to factory condition, so that all your data is wiped from the system. It goes without saying, that you’ll need to backup your data before carrying out this process!
Smartphone – If your iPhone or Android Smartphone is working, you’ll need to wipe the data and apps from the internal storage.
For an iPhone, click here for details.
And for Android, click here.
But if you have a Smartphone that’s no longer working, you won’t be able to wipe the data using the instructions above, so the safest option would be to keep hold of it.
