Filed under: Hardware, How-tos
How to safely dispose of an old Mac
The fun of technology is how quickly improved products are released. The downside is the same. So-called "E-Waste" is a huge problem. Before leaving that old Mac at the dump, consider these alternatives:- Sell it. A couple of years ago, we wrote a very thorough how-to on selling an old Mac. You probably won't make a ton of money, but you will keep it out of the landfill.
- Apple's Recycling Program. Purchase a new computer from Apple and they'll accept your old computer, CRT or peripherals (from any manufacturer) into their recycling program. Simply pack up your old stuff (computers and monitors must be packed separately), bring it to a FedEx drop off point and away it goes. This offer applies to individuals and small businesses. Large corporations may participate in Apple Corporate Recycling.
- Freecycle. If you're unfamiliar with Freecycle, it's a way to give away items to those who need them (or, find something you'd like yourself). It reduces waste and the depletion of natural resources.
- Part it out. Even a "dead" computer has some good parts on it. Better yet, there are many people who just need that obscure part from your beige G3 All In One. Consider the Low End Mac Swap List when parting out a machine.
- Donate to a church or school. You might be sick of that Quadra, but kids will love it. Churches and other small organizations could use it for simple bulletins, etc. Heck, my daughter's preschool has an original Macintosh in the office that, according to the school secretary, still gets used.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rob Rix said 6:50AM on 2-06-2008
Do make sure that the church or school wants it, first, though. It _might_ be useful to them, but then again you might just be passing the buck (of how to get rid of it) onto someone who doesn't have the time to make a 'greener' choice.
That tends to make Freecycle a better option if you're not looking for any money back, since if somebody is making the effort to take the Quadra off your hands then chances are they want it (:
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Adam said 12:00PM on 10-15-2007
Or give it to a windows fanboy ;)
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Donald Burr said 12:13PM on 10-15-2007
Do not forget, when giving away or selling an old computer, WIPE THE HARD DRIVE. You'd be surprised as to how many old computers still have people's OS's, applications, AND data -- sometimes even critical data like user names/passwords, financial records, credit card numbers, etc. on them. DELETING THE FILE, OR EVEN FORMATTING THE DRIVE, WILL NOT ERASE ALL TRACES OF YOUR FILE. "Formatting" a drive just writes a blank catalog to it; the actual data is still there and can be recovered with readily available data recovery tools. It would be like throwing away the card catalog of a library; the index (card catalog - the way you find books in a library) is blank, but if you look carefully enough, you can still find an individual book (a piece of data).
To completely erase your drive, boot from your OS X Install disk, and from the Tools menu (I think this is what it's called - I don't have a OS X boot disk in front of me so can't confirm) choose the Disk Utility tool. Click on your hard drive, go to the "Erase" tab, click "Options" and make sure the "Secure Erase" checkbox is turned on. Then click the "erase the drive" button. This will take a lot longer than a standard format, but will pretty much guarantee that your data will be completely erased and thus unrecoverable.
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Donald Burr said 12:14PM on 10-15-2007
I believe OS 9's (and previous OS's) hard disk utility (forgot it's name) also has a similar "secure erase" feature, though don't quote me on that, as it's been ages since I touched anything other than OS X.
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DJCarbon43 said 12:22PM on 10-15-2007
Great post Dave, and great comments Donald!
One bonus of owning a mac is that their longevity seems to be better than that of Windows boxes. That doesn't excuse us from recycling though, just thought I'd brag a bit :)
Mother still uses a Mac +, and father a beige G3
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Jason Williams said 1:05PM on 10-15-2007
I wholeheartedly agree with donation. I had a G4 that wasn't nearly up to snuff, by the standards of a full-time professional, but it was welcomed w/ open arms by the folks at the local shelter. And it's the environmentally responsible thing to do.
http://www.filterra.com/bioretention
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Sam said 1:22PM on 10-15-2007
#6 Donate it to me.
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Oliver Chesler said 12:53PM on 10-15-2007
No doubt this post is for Blog Action Day (http://blogactionday.org/). If you allow me here's my post about the environment. And to keep it relevant we use 100% Macs in the studio and live. We use Ableton live mostly: http://www.wiretotheear.com/2007/10/15/10-ways-a-musician-can-help-the-environment/
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Miotah said 1:26PM on 10-15-2007
And you forget http://www.screenrecycler.com/home.html !
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Simon Arch said 3:31PM on 10-15-2007
I'll second Donald's recommendation. Clean your hard drive well before you ship it off. Chances are nobody's going to run a file recovery app on it, but you can't count on that.
Older versions of the OS had an option in the Disk Setup utility to do a low-level format. It would take 9/10 of forever, but it would overwrite every sector of a disk, rendering recovery of old data almost impossible. Certainly a casual "undelete" utility would find little of value.
In OS X's Disk Utility there's an option to do something similar. You can tell it to write ones and zeros to your drive up to something like forty times. Overkill for everybody but the hyper-paranoid and DOD types.
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pabjvar said 5:10PM on 10-15-2007
I'm a student and I would appreciate any donations... if not... thats ok.. I've been saving to buy one soon... but if anyone would like to donate... I could use my saving to eat well... anyhow I just post this comment just to see if I have luck...
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dappleganger said 6:29PM on 10-15-2007
Just gave our new church my Cube...but then again, I'm the communications/media/tech person so get to maintain it, hehe. The only pc's used are the laptops by the 2 pastors, but the rest of us all use Mac. If they didn't, I'd probably have to work for someone else!
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charles said 9:19PM on 10-15-2007
Where is that aerial photo taken?
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John said 2:09AM on 10-16-2007
In the San Francisco Bay area Goodwill Industries will accept electronic equipment. If they can't make use of it they say they'll properly dispose of it. Not sure how wide spread this practice is.
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jjd said 7:05AM on 10-16-2007
charles - the picture looks like strong island in chatham, massachusetts on cape cod. I grew up there, and used to work for an aerial photographer, so I should recognize it!
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jjd said 7:10AM on 10-16-2007
Um, er, or possibly Tern Island. Both are just inside the barrier beach known as North Beach.
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Blanka said 8:45AM on 10-20-2007
To make sure my data became inaccessible, I lifted the lid of the hard drive, smashed the platters with a hammer, gave it a steel-brush treatment and put it to sleep with a huge speaker-magnet for the weekend. Do you think that erases data a bit?
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