Recycling/discarding old equipment?

[paschott]

Anyone have any suggestions on the best ways to go about doing this? We have a TON of old equipment that we'll never use. I think we even have a SAN (cool) filled with something like 1GB drives (not cool). The thing is huge and we'll never power it up, let alone actually use it. We also have a bunch of ancient PCs and monitors. If anyone has any suggestions on getting rid of a lot of equipment, they would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

-Peter

[GregSimmons]

A couple suggestions:

1. Destroy any hard drives with potentially sensitive data on them...great way to use a hammer and bleed off some stress.

2. Check with your city or county about recycling. Here, we can take small quantities to our recycling centers (PC's, monitors, etc). The county sponsors hazardous material recycling days 3 to 4 times a year when you can take larger quantities (plus hazardous chemicals).

[Daniel Meyer]

I remember our youth group having a garage sale one time, and whoever was in charge of the tech at that time threw the unwanted tech stuff in there. That is, assuming it has any value at all...it doesn't sound likely.

If the computers aren't TOO ancient, every once in a while we get an email from the office asking for a computer that somebody needs. Maybe you could throw your favorite flavor of Linux on there for an internet machine. Sometimes at the PC Workshops somebody will come in with something that really does need to be thrown away. Personally, I don't really want to get in the business of giving computers away for several reasons. For one, there's always that chance that some data will get away. Also, I don't want to get accused of playing favorites with anybody (if that's even possible with an old computer???).

I know Jim once talked about having a computer lab that kids (or anybody) could come in after school and get on the internet or whatever. Once again, if the computers aren't TOO ancient that could be a possibility. I'm pretty sure those computers would qualify for Windows if you have a site license.

If they're too far gone, look for a recycle day as Greg suggested. My dad and I always take the motherboard and other chips out of the case and throw the case in the scrap metal pile. I think our trash man took some monitors once too, not sure if that'd be the best idea though.

As for the harddrives, yes, you should remove them...but (evil laugh) my dad took a harddrive from work that had given him plenty of grief and put a 12 gauge slug through it. It was pretty cool because it hit right on the motor and put a perfect hole right through the center of it. If that's not enough for you, load up with some bird shot and have somebody throw it as hard as they can for you!

[dljordaneku]

[quote="Daniel Meyer"

As for the harddrives, yes, you should remove them...but (evil laugh) my dad took a harddrive from work that had given him plenty of grief and put a 12 gauge slug through it. It was pretty cool because it hit right on the motor and put a perfect hole right through the center of it. If that's not enough for you, load up with some bird shot and have somebody throw it as hard as they can for you![/quote]

I always suggest a good drill press

dj

[TimGolden]

We use DBAN http://www.dban.org/ to nuke the harddrives.. it's a simple boot to CD and it will NUKE the HDD

there is also an HP recycle plan:
http://h30248.www3.hp.com/recycle/ca/index.html

and you can look for your local www.freecycle.org site i've manage to give away tons of PC hardware that i'd never use

[josh.willits]

This post reminded me of our shelves of old equipment: monitors, keyboards, etc. I've heard of donating stuff like that to nearby Christian schools who may not have large budgets. You could also offer old unwanted gear to the church congregation or youth group kids who might have a need.

Our church has also done a "free sale" a few times to the community. It's basically a yard sale, but everything is free. People in the church donate all sorts of things for the free sale, and someone hosts it at their house like a normal yard sale. You should see the look on people's faces when they realize everything is free - most of the time they just don't understand. But it's been a great ministry for us.