Resurrecting The Dead

One of my projects this week is to go through the computers of my dad and deceased sister, looking for any personal data before I recycle them.

There are two desktop CPUs and two laptops, all well over five years old and therefore undoubtedly worthless. But I at least should try to boot them before discarding them.

And if I can get them to boot, I have a half dozen hard drives in a box too.

Wish me luck.

The best way to handle hard drives before recycling is to remove the drive and destroy it. A drill press works great and take about one minuter per drive.

Neither laptop boots. The desktop boots but I haven't got a mouse so no way to navigate.

Our local PC repair shoppe says they recycle for free, including destroying the hard drives so that's what I'm gonna do.

Two laptops and three desktops later I'm finally done. Well, I still have a working iMac but I don't want to GIVE that away.