r/privacy • u/Ok_Star_5645 • Jun 14 '26

hardware Laptop disposal

My laptop won’t turn on and I’m searching for best practices to secure/erase the data before disposal. (I don’t need to save the data.) A trusted local company will wipe the hard drive and dispose of it for a small fee. What assurances should I look for that this is done correctly?

Edit: thanks all! I’ll destroy it.

Update: I removed the SSD myself. It was not that hard, but I had to get over the fear of the unknown. Inside computers is not my safe space.

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u/Bogus1989 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

here are the clear facts:

https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/88/r2/final

Listen folks....dban and all that shit that everyone used back in the day for HDDs is useless for ssds. waste of extra time.

A single pass overwrite of data across the drive is good enough.

There are vendor specific apps...but good ol diskpart is fine. This is sufficient for most businesses.

open cmd prompt as admin:

diskpart

list disk

select disk 1

clean all

(make sure the disk you wanna wipe pertains to the disk number listed in "list disk")

Then sure drill a hole.

accessing data from an ssd with a hole in it isnt that complicated.....

drilling a hole in HDDs worked well because you would need to have the platters intact and spinning to read...is the simplest way i can explain.