What is a safe way to dispose of personal info on an old laptop and what to do with said laptop?

What is a safe way to dispose of personal info on an old laptop and what to do with said laptop?

I have an old laptop someone gave me that only has 64Megs of RAM on it and runs WIN XP. I wanted to wipe the drive clean by installing Ubuntu Desktop to remove any shred of personal information on it and to make it useful to someone else. But the Ubuntu installer keeps failing because there is not enough RAM. Is there another version of Linux that would easily install on a 64 Megs of RAM system?

Asked by: Guest | Views: 387

Total answers/comments: 3

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Guest [Entry]

A "boot and nuke" CD is the way to go, something like http://www.dbandotorg/ should do the trick. This will allow you to securely and easily wipe the hard drive.

Guest [Entry]

"Here's a list of very small (and therefore probably low on RAM usage) Linux distros. Damn Small Linux is probably best for you since it is designed to use a GUI and be extensible via APT.

But you can first start Linux via Live CD and run something like dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sda to wipe the HD.

As for who to give it to, there are few people for whom such outdated hardware would be useful enough to deal with its limits. Perhaps just put it on ebay or craigslist for free."

Guest [Entry]

"If the laptop is not much use to you then it's unlikely to be much use to a charity.
When I've tried to dispose of work machines in the past I found that charities that redistribute computers have a minimum specification they accept which would be higher than that of your old laptop.

Once you find a minimal Linux install you could try some of the ideas at Instructables such as the Hanging Laptop Digital Painting."