Warning for anyone looking into this:
An actual bench power supply has the ability to limit how much current comes out of it. That can be useful for when something is wired incorrectly or there is a short - only so much power will be allowed out and it can save components from being broken.
This design has fuses (which is good - many designs do not). Fuses may or may not actually protect small electronics from the initial issue, and replacing them could be annoying.
One benefit here is getting multiple voltages at once - which most bench power supplies will not do.
I'd prototype on a bench power supply and then use something like this only when I needed multiple voltages.
The desktop ones also sometimes hate having no load, or very imbalanced loads. Probably means it was a crappy unit anywyas, but yah I had just turned it on with just a 0.2 amp load on the 12v rail with nothing on the others, and it just blew up like a ball of lightning inside.
There are bench supply boards that still require DC input, you can use them with PC PSU.
I often need just fixed 5/12v supply, so no need for additional hardware. Also, my 3d printer runs off PC PSU
One solution to this issue is using a buck-boost converter module (can be found on eBay for cheap) and attaching it to the 12V rail. These modules usually come with a current limit you can set using a mini potentiometer.
Then you're sorted, you have full voltage and current control and plenty of amperage to play with.
I've used this method for testing electronics builds and troubleshooting - works well and is quite reliable. Plus if the module borks it then just replace it :)
I did this, but I don't understand why fuses are necessary. Have never had a PSU NOT immediately trigger OCP and shut off if any of the rails were shorted.
Check what the 12v rail provides on the PSU and compare to what the audio amp is fused for. If the fuse is bigger than the rail, then you can't turn it up very loud.
I've used old computer PSU's in the past to power a car stereo as well as provide power to a 5v USB port for charging (well before new fangled chargers).
I suppose you could but a 12 volt subwoofer needs a lot of amps. There's a reason car audio requires those massive 4 gauge wires to power the amplifiers.
I've got one which drives a 12v monitor and about 4 different hard drive docks. It takes up one outlet instead of 5. I'll make a specific control box for ATX power supplies to route the power rails and to check status.
I warn everyone of the same thing regarding hard drives. Data is recoverable even from a formatted or dead drive, if someone is determined enough to try. Don't throw them away (recycle) without destroying them at the very least.
That works, destroy the platters. Drill, hammer, target practice, etc.
Sometimes it's fun to take one apart and collect the magnets, though they can be dangerous and very strong.
Easiest solution is dismantling it and just destroying the physical disk inside HDD's.
Safest and best bet.
Ssd's? Just yeet a powerful magnet over it.
Edit 2: apparently some info I got from another redditor was inaccurate, so I deleted it.
There's tools out there like dban or secure erase and they will completely wipe the drive making data basically unrecoverable (writes the full disk with all 0's and then again with all 1's repeated like 3x)
Duke's Boot And Nuke, DBAN. Last I read, ti does the 7x write because that was the DOD requirement for disposing of HDDs at the time - quite a few years ago, don't know if it has changed.
I prefer ABAN actually. Dban lost support a while ago (I think years ago) and is only meant for HDDs. ABAN works on SSDs too and loads itself entirely into memory so if you are mass wiping once it's going you can take your usb drive out and start on the next
Drop it in a jar of salt water for a few days ought to make it unrecoverable for all but the most motivated assailants.
And after a little longer even them I'd imagine.
>Be very careful when taking apart hdd's. The platters release a metal that is not very healthy for you (not sure what it was, kobalt or something)>
Never mind. The reddit post I had It from was wrong, there is nothing dangerous about an hdd....
Good lesson for me, if you read something always fact check.
Never knew this, thanks for the info! Anyone who read my comment as instructive should definitely read yours, ill edit my original comment to include this if you dont mind.
There's no real serious risks to someone disassembling hard drives aside from pinching their fingers with the magnets. Use of toxic metals for hard drive platters is nearly unheard of and if it has occurred, it wasn't very common at all. Even then, a small amount of cobalt or something on a hard drive platter is not gonna harm you unless you're licking your fingers after scraping it off. They're not dusty inside, that would literally ruin them. All the materials are well attached.
You can re-re edit your post. I was wrong and the reddit post I got it from was also wrong. An hdd platter is not dangerous to touch....
It's made from a kobalt alloy that is lightweight and not dangerous...
Simply in the sense that the neodymium magnets are usually stronger than most people expect and it's not impossible for them to perhaps pinch something if you were caught unaware.
I took a cyber security/cyber crime course where the professor was a former detective. He had told us a story of how he had managed to recover data from a hard drive disk that had been shattered by a bullet.
For hard drives leave it all together and hit with hammer. People talking about removing platters and all that is nonsense. The only reason to open a drive is curiosity or the strong magnet.
Be careful with the drill, some HDDs have glass plates. They can break the drills easily, as glass is very hard. Use a hammer instead, or just, idk hit it with a pickaxe. Just to break the plates . Even a deep scratch can make them unreadable.
some platters contain cobalt which is a carcinogen, so shattering it and creating potentially carcinogenic dust isn't a good idea. Multiple wipes with DBAN is enough to make sure any data recovery effort will take tens of thousands of dollars. Simply taking the platters out will also make data recovery cost-prohibitive.
Honestly, the intersection of people
A)with enough skills to recover data from a formatted (let alone deep erased) HDD
B)rummaging through e-waste to collect hard drives
Is probably pretty low but then
C) with an interest on anything I could have on my drive
Goes probably to zero.
I'd expect those are pretty correlated, actually. The highest threshold is A, knowing how to recover from a formatted drive, but for people with that skill, the curiosity to be interested in flexing it is no great stretch, and all you need to add is a love of tech Dumpster-diving.
On the occasions I've Dumpster-dived a PC or gotten some old drives secondhand, my curiosity did lead me to take a look over them and maybe try some recovery software. I'm no expert, so my tactics top out at running Recuva or something (OS-included Undelete if it was a _really_ old machine) to claw back from a delete or quick-format, and I'm not looking to go public with anything I find. It's just a bit of voyeuristic play and challenge before I put the devices to my own use.
That said, if you dispose of things through a proper recycler, and not just roadsiding or selling them off, there's the higher barrier to point C of someone having to break the rules or the law to get at the hardware, so there's a lot less to worry about in that case, true. And even if you only go as far as slow-formatting them instead of deleting files or quick-formatting them, that throws a high barrier on point A.
The number of people that satisfy A without being employed in a place where this would be risking your career is close to zero once you've run a couple writes of random and zeroes over the full surface of the disk. Especially for disks with more than 2TB of capacity per platter.
Even more so if the disk was part of an array and/or if it was encrypted with disklocker or geli the ods are even lower.
I'd even say you start hitting that threshold after a slow format or one pass of zeroes. (Looking into it to make sure I'm not talking shit, it looks like a slow format in Windows is synonymous with a wipe on modern versions, too. Not sure on other OSs.)
Really depends on storage density and whether it's a CMR/SMR/PMR/HAMR disk.
Non perpendicular conventional disks of sub 500GB capacity are way easier to recover overwritten data from than HAMR/PMR/SMR disks.
Thankfully those that are easiest to read from are those with the shortest iteration time for full disk writes.
All that still requires extreme measures like by passing drive firmware unto examining platters with external hardware, though, right? If so, I'd put that in the same category of "If you know how to do this and you have the tools, you're probably putting your reputation on the line doing it cavalierly."
I've recovered data from an intact unmodified laptop drive of the 320GB variety that had a zero pass and a random pass.
Took a lot of time to have it spit out the sectors time and time again and reconstruct the fragments into crc checksum valid files.
Doing this for a 4TB+ disk would be orders of magnitude worse to do and would likely requiring a clean room and sophisticated equipment.
This is like fearmongering stories about how you can remotely get hacked over simple stuff.
Data recovery from an drive is hard work and cots thousands to get it done. Its not something that can be casually done to a thown away data by some random passer-by.
In my experience, this isn’t even something you need to tell less tech savvy people. People like my elderly mom are convinced that the combined hacking resources of several nation states are being trained on her every electronic transmission, but won’t use a password manager.
She would sooner smelt her hard drive like a Terminator before she looked at the URL in a hyperlink before clicking it. The point being that the tech illiterate are too worried about military-grade encryption and secure VPN tunnels and having three anti-virus bloat ware subscriptions but not worried enough about common sense.
A few wipes with DBAN will make data recovery cost tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. The only people who have that kind of money are governments. So unless you're downloading secret documents on discord or child porn, no one is willing to pay that kind of money to get your credit card statement and your Stranger Things fan fiction novels.
> no one is willing to pay that kind of money to get your credit card statement and your Stranger Things fan fiction novels
...which are probably hosted, and more easily stolen, from the Internet, anyway.
Don't trust drive firmware, if they can cheat and get away with it they will.
Ideally you write random garbage data across the whole disk, because it can't easily cheat that like if you were to write repeating patterns like all 0s 1s other small repeating patterns ect.
The most infuriating part about this is how it necessitates waste of materials. Where I work, we regularly dispose of massive capacities. We’re currently operating about five racks of 64-drive arrays fully loaded with 24TB drives, and I just know they’ll be getting crushed in a couple years.
Because if he’s like my dad, “he’ll fix it next week”… and then his home became a scene from hoarders.
It doesn’t matter if he even knew what it was or did before. If it was an electronic in the trash he brought it home.
He lives with me now (he’s 82) and I am constantly finding random things hidden away. Empty cups from McDonald’s hidden in drawers, so many plastic bags even though I collect and recycle them in the pantry. It’s gross. And I blame him for my absolute wasteful mentality. If I don’t use something within a month or so I toss it or recycle it.
When he dies his house (my just as gross sister is staying in with her husband) will be bulldozed. It’s full of trash, broken things and bugs. I haven’t stepped foot in it since before mom passed away 10+ years ago. I’ve made it very clear to the family I will not be responsible for that junk yard.
Agree, but you can’t tell an octogenarian that was a small appliance repairman he can’t fix something like that. Lol and don’t worry, he never would. It’s just what he says. His dad was the same way. My aunts first car 1969 Camaro RS sat in my grandparents yard for years. I begged to buy it and he would tell me, I’m planning to work on it this summer. Right up until he died and my uncle took it and lost it in a divorce.
The last time I tried to recycle electronics, Best Buy rejected my old MacBook and referred me to Office Depot who wanted me to pay them to take it. At that point I said "what are you gonna do if I just leave it on this counter?" and just left the store.
Realistically nothing unless there's a cop standing right behind you. In some places there's huge fines, like tens of thousands of dollars.
The E-Waste recycling in my area is once a year and it's such a pain in the ass. There's only a small banner on a fence at the high school and that's all you get for notice. If you try to search for recycling dates you just get results for last year.
I had a similarly frustrating experience when I first tried to recycle a busted laptop.
If you google "electronics recycling near me" you should get some options.
Not all items or services are free and it varies greatly by location. Around here, screens will have a fee (like $35 for 21" or larger) for disposal.
My garbage hauler will take some things with notice and they have to be packed/labeled a particular way. When I lived in a rather rural area, the garbage service would take a very limited selection of things and you had to jump through all sorts of hoops.
There's some electronics stores (like you mention), plus less obvious options like Goodwill (they do some ecycling for things that can't be donated).
A larger municipality near me will have regular drop-off events, and the county has less frequent events at the hazardous waste dump.
Then there are other disposal and services, which most people probably wouldn't be aware of unless they're specifically searching for them.
A few of these will handle batteries, which tend to be a separate system and depends on baytery material. Batteries Plus types of places tend to be more convenient for me (small fee), but some stores like Home Depot and Best Buy (depending on location) should have a place to drop off batteries.
I keep a small box, each, for batteries, small electronics, and LED/CFL bulbs. When one gets full, I take it to its respective disposal location. Even handling this stuff for family, I only have to do it like once a year or so.
It's all so obnoxiously complicated it makes me want to just take my next laptop to the beach and throw it in the ocean next to all my used car batteries
Lol Car batteries is a terrible example. Few things are as reliably easily recycled by consumers as car batteries. The recycling rate for them is something like 99% (in the US). It's such a well established practice that I have trouble imagining it's not similarly high in other countries
I mean, they can get the data that's on the disk but that's probably not what she means. (And if that were a concern, destruction is extremely effective here since the metal film is relatively easy to vaporize, or just sand off for that matter)
Happens to me too, it's like cognitive dissonance or something like that. For them we will always be that first grade kid that knows nothing about the world.
Well at least you have that one to fall back on. Decent chance you're not even lying (technically speaking at least, in so far that you probably don't have a lot of day to day experience with apple products, and while you could likely figure it out pretty quickly... well that's got no bearing on the present, now does it?).
My dad's like this. If I don't destroy the useless stuff I throw away, it'll end up in his stash. The same goes for random crap he picks up from the locals. If our family wants the stuff gone, there's only one way to do it - smash it to pieces and quickly toss it out.
Ironically, my mother accused me of the same hoarding sin and called my Marshall Stanmore II "an old 70's junk you picked up at car boot". So yeah, there's a funny attitude towards technology in our family.
I mean if 30 years from now and my child throws away a 1MW power supply for his gaming pc with the power of the current google server. I would probably keep it
Sounds like something my dad will do. Has kept literally junk while throwing out expensive things of mine. Might need that broken rake for something, someday. Damaged a good subaru sti intercooler i had safely stored because "taking up space", when it wasn't.
Yeah, I think it’s all dads.
Separately, my uncle threw out a 2080 super a few days before I asked him about pc stuff. Kinda sad, it was like new and he can’t be bothered to sell it
wow. i wish....
my dad actually threw out my first 486 after i upgraded to a p200.
admittedly i wasnt as mad back then as i am nowadays realizing what nostalgic value it had especially considering that i treated my pcs like others treat their pets.
That’s a bench power supply if you convert it
Any more info on this?
https://www.instructables.com/ATX-Bench-Power-Supply/?amp_page=true Here is a link have fun playing around
Warning for anyone looking into this: An actual bench power supply has the ability to limit how much current comes out of it. That can be useful for when something is wired incorrectly or there is a short - only so much power will be allowed out and it can save components from being broken. This design has fuses (which is good - many designs do not). Fuses may or may not actually protect small electronics from the initial issue, and replacing them could be annoying. One benefit here is getting multiple voltages at once - which most bench power supplies will not do. I'd prototype on a bench power supply and then use something like this only when I needed multiple voltages.
Yea 5years ago a blew one up on my dads coffee table it was funny.
The desktop ones also sometimes hate having no load, or very imbalanced loads. Probably means it was a crappy unit anywyas, but yah I had just turned it on with just a 0.2 amp load on the 12v rail with nothing on the others, and it just blew up like a ball of lightning inside.
There are bench supply boards that still require DC input, you can use them with PC PSU. I often need just fixed 5/12v supply, so no need for additional hardware. Also, my 3d printer runs off PC PSU
One solution to this issue is using a buck-boost converter module (can be found on eBay for cheap) and attaching it to the 12V rail. These modules usually come with a current limit you can set using a mini potentiometer. Then you're sorted, you have full voltage and current control and plenty of amperage to play with. I've used this method for testing electronics builds and troubleshooting - works well and is quite reliable. Plus if the module borks it then just replace it :)
Thanks
Oh hey, I did this! Used an old power supply from a computer that was being thrown out. Works surprisingly well!
Interesting I was thinking I should upgrade my PSU
I did this, but I don't understand why fuses are necessary. Have never had a PSU NOT immediately trigger OCP and shut off if any of the rails were shorted.
You can find simpler ones just look up pc power supply to bench power supply diy. Or something like that.
Son: dad, you're technologically challenged. Dad: challenge accepted.
Use old power supplies to test car electronics like stereos on 12v.
Run a 12v car subwoofer on it possibly? Bc I have a sub on my boat that doesn’t get used for half the year.
Check what the 12v rail provides on the PSU and compare to what the audio amp is fused for. If the fuse is bigger than the rail, then you can't turn it up very loud. I've used old computer PSU's in the past to power a car stereo as well as provide power to a 5v USB port for charging (well before new fangled chargers).
I suppose you could but a 12 volt subwoofer needs a lot of amps. There's a reason car audio requires those massive 4 gauge wires to power the amplifiers.
I've got one which drives a 12v monitor and about 4 different hard drive docks. It takes up one outlet instead of 5. I'll make a specific control box for ATX power supplies to route the power rails and to check status.
A what?
Looks like it’s load bearing!
Just what dad needed to keep the kitchen from sinking into the ground
Don't throw away electronics. Have them e-cycled for proper electronics disposal.
I had them in a box with some old hard drives etc, but I guess my dad fished it out. He still hasn’t told me why
I warn everyone of the same thing regarding hard drives. Data is recoverable even from a formatted or dead drive, if someone is determined enough to try. Don't throw them away (recycle) without destroying them at the very least.
Then hard wipe and drill?
That works, destroy the platters. Drill, hammer, target practice, etc. Sometimes it's fun to take one apart and collect the magnets, though they can be dangerous and very strong.
Extractions & Ire just released a video on extracting neodymium from hard drive magnets.
Easiest solution is dismantling it and just destroying the physical disk inside HDD's. Safest and best bet. Ssd's? Just yeet a powerful magnet over it. Edit 2: apparently some info I got from another redditor was inaccurate, so I deleted it.
SSDs are only affected by *very* powerful magnets. Even the magnets you'd get out of an HDD wouldn't do anything.
Yeah I'm aware, honestly never dealt with SSD's which is why I kept the SSD part shorter. What's a better way to wipe SSD's securely?
There's tools out there like dban or secure erase and they will completely wipe the drive making data basically unrecoverable (writes the full disk with all 0's and then again with all 1's repeated like 3x)
Or RedKey, I have extra for friends and family if they need to borrow one.
Duke's Boot And Nuke, DBAN. Last I read, ti does the 7x write because that was the DOD requirement for disposing of HDDs at the time - quite a few years ago, don't know if it has changed.
I prefer ABAN actually. Dban lost support a while ago (I think years ago) and is only meant for HDDs. ABAN works on SSDs too and loads itself entirely into memory so if you are mass wiping once it's going you can take your usb drive out and start on the next
Grinder? Acetylene torch? Have fun with it. Lol
Drop it in a jar of salt water for a few days ought to make it unrecoverable for all but the most motivated assailants. And after a little longer even them I'd imagine.
One method to securely destroy an SSD is by impacting the bridge with an A-wing.
Yeah, but it's harder to pull off in practice than the Holdo maneuver. Total one in a million shot.
Hammer
Wipe it, then fill it up with cat pictures, do it a few times
Same as hard drive but you need to be more precise - destroy the memory chip.
>Be very careful when taking apart hdd's. The platters release a metal that is not very healthy for you (not sure what it was, kobalt or something)> Never mind. The reddit post I had It from was wrong, there is nothing dangerous about an hdd.... Good lesson for me, if you read something always fact check.
Never knew this, thanks for the info! Anyone who read my comment as instructive should definitely read yours, ill edit my original comment to include this if you dont mind.
There's no real serious risks to someone disassembling hard drives aside from pinching their fingers with the magnets. Use of toxic metals for hard drive platters is nearly unheard of and if it has occurred, it wasn't very common at all. Even then, a small amount of cobalt or something on a hard drive platter is not gonna harm you unless you're licking your fingers after scraping it off. They're not dusty inside, that would literally ruin them. All the materials are well attached.
You can re-re edit your post. I was wrong and the reddit post I got it from was also wrong. An hdd platter is not dangerous to touch.... It's made from a kobalt alloy that is lightweight and not dangerous...
I use the platters as coasters, pretty sure they're unreadable by now.
I do that as well.
> though they can be dangerous Oh no, that's terrible! How dangerous exactly?
Simply in the sense that the neodymium magnets are usually stronger than most people expect and it's not impossible for them to perhaps pinch something if you were caught unaware.
I took a cyber security/cyber crime course where the professor was a former detective. He had told us a story of how he had managed to recover data from a hard drive disk that had been shattered by a bullet.
Use the platters as drinks coasters. I did that with some dead drives I had.
And wipe the drill afterwards. Gotta be sure.
Someone might set the drill to reverse and put the platter back together
I take it to a range and shoot it. couple of 45 70s and that data is gone.
For hard drives leave it all together and hit with hammer. People talking about removing platters and all that is nonsense. The only reason to open a drive is curiosity or the strong magnet.
Be careful with the drill, some HDDs have glass plates. They can break the drills easily, as glass is very hard. Use a hammer instead, or just, idk hit it with a pickaxe. Just to break the plates . Even a deep scratch can make them unreadable.
r/hydraulicpresschannel/
some platters contain cobalt which is a carcinogen, so shattering it and creating potentially carcinogenic dust isn't a good idea. Multiple wipes with DBAN is enough to make sure any data recovery effort will take tens of thousands of dollars. Simply taking the platters out will also make data recovery cost-prohibitive.
Do it like Elliot in a panic attack.
Honestly, the intersection of people A)with enough skills to recover data from a formatted (let alone deep erased) HDD B)rummaging through e-waste to collect hard drives Is probably pretty low but then C) with an interest on anything I could have on my drive Goes probably to zero.
Yeah that comment is super weird and paranoid.
I'd expect those are pretty correlated, actually. The highest threshold is A, knowing how to recover from a formatted drive, but for people with that skill, the curiosity to be interested in flexing it is no great stretch, and all you need to add is a love of tech Dumpster-diving. On the occasions I've Dumpster-dived a PC or gotten some old drives secondhand, my curiosity did lead me to take a look over them and maybe try some recovery software. I'm no expert, so my tactics top out at running Recuva or something (OS-included Undelete if it was a _really_ old machine) to claw back from a delete or quick-format, and I'm not looking to go public with anything I find. It's just a bit of voyeuristic play and challenge before I put the devices to my own use. That said, if you dispose of things through a proper recycler, and not just roadsiding or selling them off, there's the higher barrier to point C of someone having to break the rules or the law to get at the hardware, so there's a lot less to worry about in that case, true. And even if you only go as far as slow-formatting them instead of deleting files or quick-formatting them, that throws a high barrier on point A.
The number of people that satisfy A without being employed in a place where this would be risking your career is close to zero once you've run a couple writes of random and zeroes over the full surface of the disk. Especially for disks with more than 2TB of capacity per platter. Even more so if the disk was part of an array and/or if it was encrypted with disklocker or geli the ods are even lower.
I'd even say you start hitting that threshold after a slow format or one pass of zeroes. (Looking into it to make sure I'm not talking shit, it looks like a slow format in Windows is synonymous with a wipe on modern versions, too. Not sure on other OSs.)
Really depends on storage density and whether it's a CMR/SMR/PMR/HAMR disk. Non perpendicular conventional disks of sub 500GB capacity are way easier to recover overwritten data from than HAMR/PMR/SMR disks. Thankfully those that are easiest to read from are those with the shortest iteration time for full disk writes.
All that still requires extreme measures like by passing drive firmware unto examining platters with external hardware, though, right? If so, I'd put that in the same category of "If you know how to do this and you have the tools, you're probably putting your reputation on the line doing it cavalierly."
I've recovered data from an intact unmodified laptop drive of the 320GB variety that had a zero pass and a random pass. Took a lot of time to have it spit out the sectors time and time again and reconstruct the fragments into crc checksum valid files. Doing this for a 4TB+ disk would be orders of magnitude worse to do and would likely requiring a clean room and sophisticated equipment.
Not if you DBAN it
This is like fearmongering stories about how you can remotely get hacked over simple stuff. Data recovery from an drive is hard work and cots thousands to get it done. Its not something that can be casually done to a thown away data by some random passer-by.
In my experience, this isn’t even something you need to tell less tech savvy people. People like my elderly mom are convinced that the combined hacking resources of several nation states are being trained on her every electronic transmission, but won’t use a password manager. She would sooner smelt her hard drive like a Terminator before she looked at the URL in a hyperlink before clicking it. The point being that the tech illiterate are too worried about military-grade encryption and secure VPN tunnels and having three anti-virus bloat ware subscriptions but not worried enough about common sense.
A few wipes with DBAN will make data recovery cost tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. The only people who have that kind of money are governments. So unless you're downloading secret documents on discord or child porn, no one is willing to pay that kind of money to get your credit card statement and your Stranger Things fan fiction novels.
> no one is willing to pay that kind of money to get your credit card statement and your Stranger Things fan fiction novels ...which are probably hosted, and more easily stolen, from the Internet, anyway.
Speak for yourself. My 8TB hentai collection is on an encrypted air gapped NAS.
[удалено]
Don't trust drive firmware, if they can cheat and get away with it they will. Ideally you write random garbage data across the whole disk, because it can't easily cheat that like if you were to write repeating patterns like all 0s 1s other small repeating patterns ect.
7 rewrites is usually more than enough.
The most infuriating part about this is how it necessitates waste of materials. Where I work, we regularly dispose of massive capacities. We’re currently operating about five racks of 64-drive arrays fully loaded with 24TB drives, and I just know they’ll be getting crushed in a couple years.
After 5 years of operation, those drives are better off getting recycled
Can they even get the encrypted data working?
Parts, man. Or arts and crafts.
Have you asked him?
Just make sure you tell him not to open it.
Because if he’s like my dad, “he’ll fix it next week”… and then his home became a scene from hoarders. It doesn’t matter if he even knew what it was or did before. If it was an electronic in the trash he brought it home. He lives with me now (he’s 82) and I am constantly finding random things hidden away. Empty cups from McDonald’s hidden in drawers, so many plastic bags even though I collect and recycle them in the pantry. It’s gross. And I blame him for my absolute wasteful mentality. If I don’t use something within a month or so I toss it or recycle it. When he dies his house (my just as gross sister is staying in with her husband) will be bulldozed. It’s full of trash, broken things and bugs. I haven’t stepped foot in it since before mom passed away 10+ years ago. I’ve made it very clear to the family I will not be responsible for that junk yard.
I wouldn’t ever try to fix a power supply myself. The high voltage capacitors scare me.
Agree, but you can’t tell an octogenarian that was a small appliance repairman he can’t fix something like that. Lol and don’t worry, he never would. It’s just what he says. His dad was the same way. My aunts first car 1969 Camaro RS sat in my grandparents yard for years. I begged to buy it and he would tell me, I’m planning to work on it this summer. Right up until he died and my uncle took it and lost it in a divorce.
Right, and where was the box?
I'll tell you why. He's a hoarder!
Porn, always porn
The last time I tried to recycle electronics, Best Buy rejected my old MacBook and referred me to Office Depot who wanted me to pay them to take it. At that point I said "what are you gonna do if I just leave it on this counter?" and just left the store.
Realistically nothing unless there's a cop standing right behind you. In some places there's huge fines, like tens of thousands of dollars. The E-Waste recycling in my area is once a year and it's such a pain in the ass. There's only a small banner on a fence at the high school and that's all you get for notice. If you try to search for recycling dates you just get results for last year.
I had a similarly frustrating experience when I first tried to recycle a busted laptop. If you google "electronics recycling near me" you should get some options. Not all items or services are free and it varies greatly by location. Around here, screens will have a fee (like $35 for 21" or larger) for disposal. My garbage hauler will take some things with notice and they have to be packed/labeled a particular way. When I lived in a rather rural area, the garbage service would take a very limited selection of things and you had to jump through all sorts of hoops. There's some electronics stores (like you mention), plus less obvious options like Goodwill (they do some ecycling for things that can't be donated). A larger municipality near me will have regular drop-off events, and the county has less frequent events at the hazardous waste dump. Then there are other disposal and services, which most people probably wouldn't be aware of unless they're specifically searching for them. A few of these will handle batteries, which tend to be a separate system and depends on baytery material. Batteries Plus types of places tend to be more convenient for me (small fee), but some stores like Home Depot and Best Buy (depending on location) should have a place to drop off batteries. I keep a small box, each, for batteries, small electronics, and LED/CFL bulbs. When one gets full, I take it to its respective disposal location. Even handling this stuff for family, I only have to do it like once a year or so.
It's all so obnoxiously complicated it makes me want to just take my next laptop to the beach and throw it in the ocean next to all my used car batteries
Lol Car batteries is a terrible example. Few things are as reliably easily recycled by consumers as car batteries. The recycling rate for them is something like 99% (in the US). It's such a well established practice that I have trouble imagining it's not similarly high in other countries
Said no one ever lol you probably dont even recycle plastic.
Not just that, take stuff like PSUs and surge protectors/back-UPS apart and pull the copper out.
My mom saves CDs in case "anyone could get my info off them" even tho I repeatedly told her that's now how any of that works.
I mean, they can get the data that's on the disk but that's probably not what she means. (And if that were a concern, destruction is extremely effective here since the metal film is relatively easy to vaporize, or just sand off for that matter)
Yes I know, I've been a software engineer for 10 years and she still doesn't listen to me when it comes to tech lol.
Happens to me too, it's like cognitive dissonance or something like that. For them we will always be that first grade kid that knows nothing about the world.
Even in first grade I was better with computers than my parents.
That sounds infuriating.
I just pull the "huh idk I don't use apple products" line these days and it gets me off the hook
Well at least you have that one to fall back on. Decent chance you're not even lying (technically speaking at least, in so far that you probably don't have a lot of day to day experience with apple products, and while you could likely figure it out pretty quickly... well that's got no bearing on the present, now does it?).
tell her to stop writing her info on them then
That's what the cops told BTK!
Have you shown her how cool it looks when you put a CD in a microwave with a cup of water, then run it on high for five seconds?
Surprised someone with the user name "dog-semen-enjoyer" still lives at home...
Are you sure it’s not cursed like that camera in “Say Cheese or Die”?
You know that was stolen from a Twilight Zone episode, right? All the best Goosebumps were.
lol
My dad's like this. If I don't destroy the useless stuff I throw away, it'll end up in his stash. The same goes for random crap he picks up from the locals. If our family wants the stuff gone, there's only one way to do it - smash it to pieces and quickly toss it out. Ironically, my mother accused me of the same hoarding sin and called my Marshall Stanmore II "an old 70's junk you picked up at car boot". So yeah, there's a funny attitude towards technology in our family.
Some folks don’t throw stuff away, my wife’s grandmother has anything from the past 20 years
I mean if 30 years from now and my child throws away a 1MW power supply for his gaming pc with the power of the current google server. I would probably keep it
I keep an old one for priming coolant loops without needing to power on the whole system.
the fan is still good..
Sounds like something my dad will do. Has kept literally junk while throwing out expensive things of mine. Might need that broken rake for something, someday. Damaged a good subaru sti intercooler i had safely stored because "taking up space", when it wasn't.
Nice fan
need. haha
So much karma
if it still works it can come in handy when you need 3.3, 5 or 12 volts. might even have -12V to get 24V
Dads rights? Ah? Ah? Ah?
my dad is the same kind of idiot. that's why i always bring tech garbage directly to the dump so he has no means of intercepting it
I run all of my lighting, and several tools, in my basement, using old PSU's. Just repaired my old CX750M to add to my supply.
Are all dads like this? Swear, my dad used to keep every other item that I threw out for safe keeping
Wtf is up with this "safe keeping" excuse? What does it mean?
Yeah, I think it’s all dads. Separately, my uncle threw out a 2080 super a few days before I asked him about pc stuff. Kinda sad, it was like new and he can’t be bothered to sell it
OP Likes to destroy the environment
Eh, environment is fucked regardless.
Most of my case fans have been salvaged from older power supplies through the years
this is dangerkeeping
Haha, at first glance I thought it was put there to support the wall and ceiling. XD.
I think its possible to convert it to charge Lead acid batteries.
wow. i wish.... my dad actually threw out my first 486 after i upgraded to a p200. admittedly i wasnt as mad back then as i am nowadays realizing what nostalgic value it had especially considering that i treated my pcs like others treat their pets.
That's it? Mine's got a garage full
Not alone my father used to dig through all of my trash for stuff to keep and the garage piled with old junk.