Inherited computers - can't use as is

[curtisnora]

Hi everyone!

I'm new to this forum. So I'll cut to the chase about why I'm here. My mother passed away 5.5 years ago and my brother 4.75 years ago. I was sole heir to a very SMALL estate for them both, primarily household furnishings. Anyway, my brother was a techie and a tinkerer. I have removable hard drives running out my ear, several laptop computers and desktops. Eventually, I want to do something with them, like get rid of most.

My brother, HOW shall I say, was a TOR, DEEP WEB, person, so I'm not sure what all are on his computers. I don't care except they are all sitting in my house. So, short of pulling all hard drives and drilling a whole in them, im going to try to save some for use. So, most of my questions will be when I get to each one, HOW to I erase, REFORMAT, or whatever to reinstall original software, which I do not have disks for except a few.

I'm at a loss. So I would appreciate all the help I can get. Otherwise, I'll load them up and take to the police department to see what they advise.

Thanks!

 

[kanewolf]

I would recommend you plan for drilling holes in the disks. Old computers are not very valuable. Drill the holes and send electronics for recycling.

 

[curtisnora]

I would recommend you plan for drilling holes in the disks. Old computers are not very valuable. Drill the holes and send electronics for recycling.

 

[jgustin7b]

First off, I am very sorry for your losses. Hope you are doing better today. Anyways, it depends on the system. If from the looks of the system it is really old, do as the previous user mentioned and prepare it to be recycled. If it powers on and seems to work at a somewhat smooth pace, you could try to make some use of it, but most likely it’s going to be the first option.

 

[curtisnora]

Thanks kanewolf. Most of them, I definitely will. Some of the later laptops hard drives I think I could use to store family photos that I need to scan. I have about 7000 of them going back into the early 1900s. But again, hard drives are very cheap now and it's probably more effective to just by a couple of TB drives. Thanks anyway.

 

[curtisnora]

First off, I am very sorry for your losses. Hope you are doing better today. Anyways, it depends on the system. If from the looks of the system it is really old, do as the previous user mentioned and prepare it to be recycled. If it powers on and seems to work at a somewhat smooth pace, you could try to make some use of it, but most likely it’s going to be the first option.

 

[curtisnora]

Thank you. Most ate old. Some of the machines go back to the 1980s. So those will probably get trashed. The Acer Aspire One that was manufactured in 2012, however, is a nice size for me to take on vacation. It has WiFi capabilities and an SD slot for me to add my photos and upload. Thankfully after my brother got sick, we copied all of my mother's pictures to thumb drives, so I have the digital ones. Plus, it's a Windows 7 machine instead of a Windows 10, so my Fujitsu scanner can be used to scan all the hard copy photos.

I'll try to contact the manufacturer to see what they can do, if anything.

 

[Solandri]

Thankfully after my brother got sick, we copied all of my mother's pictures to thumb drives, so I have the digital ones.

Be aware that NAND cells slowly lose charge over time, and thus "forget" the information they're storing. This includes SSDs, SD cards, and USB flash drives. I've accessed data on SD cards which was 5+ years old. But have had problems with data that is 10 years old. So be sure to copy the photos to a HDD or cloud storage for archival purposes. Don't toss the flash drive into a drawer and expect it to work 10 years later.

Sandy Bridge and newer I consider usable. If it was a pre-built system, it should have the Windows serial number on a sticker somewhere on the case (Vista, Win 7). Win 8/10 gets it from the computer's BIOS. You can download install disks/boot USB images for these. Vista might be tough, but it's pretty much EOL anyway so you might as well replace it with some Linux distro if you plan to use the hardware. Or let the person you give/sell it to deal with buying a newer copy of Windows. Drives can be scrubbed with a bootable CD made from DBAN.

https://dban.org/

If you don't want to bother with selling, you can donate these systems to charity. A lot of churches and organizations piece together and refurbish old systems, and give them to the poor or ship them to developing countries. You can get a tax deduction for this if you itemize your taxes (although you'll have to estimate the hardware's value - take some screenshots of "recently sold" items with the same specs on eBay in case the IRS tells you to justify your valuations). Talk to the charity to see what sort of equipment they want. Let them deal with reformatting and reinstalling.

Pretty much anything older that Sandy Bridge (2011) I would trash. They consume a lot more power than modern systems, and you'll actually be doing a disservice to anyone you donate them to. In a few years the extra electricity they burn using those old systems would've paid for a newer computer. I only keep one around in case someone comes to me asking to recover data from an IDE drive, or needs data pulled from a proprietary drive which uses an ISA card.

There used to be recyclers who would pay you $/lb of old electronics. I dunno if they still do that what with China refusing to take more used electronics. If they still do, that may be less hassle than trying to sort through the older stuff. Just toss it in a box, weigh it, and get paid.