Hardware recycling question: what do you do with harddrives?

[Ualaa]

I generally recycle them, as in... pass older systems on to relatives.
In general, my 3-5 year old gaming system is a lot stronger than whatever most non-gaming people happen to have.

[JohnGabriel]

I generally recycle them, as in... pass older systems on to relatives.
In general, my 3-5 year old gaming system is a lot stronger than whatever most non-gaming people happen to have.

Hopefully reinstalling Windows from scratch with a full format wipes it well enough. Because that is what I do to mine before giving old computers to family to use.

[MiRai]

Hopefully reinstalling Windows from scratch with a full format wipes it well enough. Because that is what I do to mine before giving old computers to family to use.

Probably not, but it's only a problem if they're using special software to dig up archaic stuff on the drive... and then they'd need to care enough about any material they did find... and then...

Well, what are you so worried about?

[JohnGabriel]

Probably not, but it's only a problem if they're using special software to dig up archaic stuff on the drive... and then they'd need to care enough about any material they did find... and then...

Well, what are you so worried about?

Only thing I can think of would be passwords saved by my browser, but thats not saved plain text. But my old hard drives only go to family and by the time they get rid of it they've been using it years so never had worries.