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Intro: Our
subject this month “Proper disposal of old computer equipment.” |
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Proper
preparation of computer equipment |
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Options for
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Featured Links:
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Intro: Our subject this month “Proper
disposal of old computer equipment.”
September 9, 2003
Dear Subscriber,
Many of my customers have been asking me about how to properly dispose
of computer equipment. Anybody who’s been in business for a few years
has got a closet full of useless computers, monitors, and software. In
this newsletter I’ll talk about how to prepare your equipment for
disposal and the best ways to make sure they don’t end up in a landfill.
As always, if you like this newsletter and know someone who you think
would be interested in it, feel free to forward it to them (in its
entirety). They can subscribe themselves by going to our web site and
clicking on "Newsletter". The link is in the footer. Also, if you have
topic suggestions, please email them to
newsletter@bluegraniteconsulting.com.
Enjoy!
Cyrus
Proper
preparation of computer equipment
Computers hold
your valuable data. When you get rid of your computer, you don’t want
to give that personal information to someone else. Recently, a group at
MIT did an experiment where they purchased used computers from multiple
sources (online, local computer stores, dot-com auctions, etc) and
discovered that there was a surprising amount of personal information
still stored on them. They discovered social security numbers, credit
card numbers, tax returns, love letters, investment information,
confidential business-related data and much much more.
There are three primary methods for getting rid of the data: Physically
destroying the disks, degaussing the disks (A huge powerful magnet),
and “Sanitizing” the disk. I’m going to concentrate on sanitizing
because it’s the easiest and most practical for most small offices.
To sanitize a hard drive, you will need to download an image to create
a bootable disk. Boot from disk and run utilities for wiping the hard
drive. The tools will write all “0”s, then all “1”s. It’ll go back and
forth a few times across the entire hard drive until the all the data
has been overwritten properly. The FBI will probably still be able to
get to the data if they put enough resources into it, but most of the
rest of the world will not. There are links to some of the tools and
the MIT report in the links section of this newsletter.
Options for
disposing of the equipment
The important
thing to know about computer equipment is that it absolutely should not
be put into a landfill. Circuit boards and monitors are full of heavy
metals that will seep into ground water supplies and wreak
environmental havoc. Monitors have a few pounds of lead in the glass
(to protect the user from harmful rays).
Donating computer equipment: If your computer equipment is only a
couple years old, you may be able to donate it. If it’s much older,
most organizations will have no use for it and won’t accept it.
Certainly there are tax benefits for individuals donating equipment,
but check with your tax professional when donating equipment from your
business. If you’ve already written it off, you probably won’t be able
to write it off again.
The other option is recycling. Be careful when picking a recycling
center, because much of the equipment that was supposed to be recycled
has ended up in toxic piles in third-world countries. Under pressure
from environmental groups, some manufacturers have started recycling
programs. A few countries have even made this mandatory. Hewlett
Packard, Dell, and Gateway all either have or are putting together
recycling programs. If you have a computer or monitor sold by one of
these manufacturers, contact them or check out their web site for
information on how to take advantage of their program. They will
probably charge $10-50, but they do a lot for that money. It includes
shipping and securely removing data from the hard drive. It may even
include packaging. If this option is available to you, I highly
recommend it.
If a manufacturer-run recycling option is not available, you will have
to find a local organization to take care of it. There is a local
organization in Santa Clara County that will take just about any
computer or office equipment. If it’s new enough that it’s still
useful, they don’t charge to take it. They’ll fix it up and donate it
to a needy organization. If it’s older, they charge a little bit, but
will make sure it doesn’t end up in a land fill. You can check out
their web site at http://www crc.org.
You can also check with your local waste disposal organization. They
are motivated to keep this stuff out of the ground, so they usually
will have a reasonably-priced program for disposal.
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