E-waste amounts to 70% of toxic waste in America’s landfills.
In a world where technology is constantly changing and updating, it can be challenging to keep up. As you upgrade to the next model of a device, it might make you wonder how to get rid of electronic waste.
There is a way to e-cycle your old computers, but it is essential to do it safely and legally. Read on to find out how to get rid of an old computer and do it in the best way for you and the environment.
Back Up Your Files
First of all, your need to make sure you have saved all the data from your PC before you consider recycling or trading it in. There is nothing worse than realizing that you lost some important data or personal photos because you did not back up your data.
The easiest way to save your data so you can restore it to the new device is to upload it to a cloud storage service. These could include GDrive, Microsoft OneDrive, or Apple iCloud. However, many others offer the same services.
If you do not have a cloud service, you will need to transfer your data to a USB drive or a local Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive. Alternatively, if you have two hard drives in your machine, you could copy everything onto one drive and remove it from the PC. You can then reinstall this in your new device at a later date.
Deauthorize Your PC
You may have certain pieces of software, such as your operating system, which are authorized to the hardware in your device. If you want to reuse the software on another device, you need to reauthorize this software from this machine.
Often the uninstaller software will have a method for deauthorizing a piece of software built into the process. If you can not find a specific function within the PC, try uninstalling the software and see if that triggers the process.
Format the Hard Drive
Once all your files are safely backed up, you need to ensure that your hard drives are wiped of all data before recycling your old computer. Simply deleting the files is not sufficient to make the data inaccessible as there is software available that can recover it.
Use a file shredding piece of software that will destroy and encrypt everything on the drive. It will go beyond a simple system format and ensure that the data is difficult to recover. If you want to go beyond this, you will need to destroy the hard drive itself physically.
Find an E-Recycler Near You
If you are a business owner, you are legally responsible for the data on your drives, so you need to make sure that the data is gone and entirely unrecoverable.
An e-recycling specialist can help you with this process and ensure that your data is unrecoverable. They can also help you recoup costs on recycled e-waste and arrange for pick-up to recycle more oversized items like servers.
Check out https://www.cjdecycling.com/ for more information about these kinds of e-cycling services.
How to Get Rid of an Old Computer Safely
Hopefully, this short guide has given you a good idea of how to get rid of an old computer and the steps you need to follow to ensure that your data is not compromised. Recycling e-waste is a great way to help the planet and help you recoup costs on constantly updating technology.
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