Should I Sell or Trash My Crashed Computer?

[tabnat80]

Ok. So most of you might remember that my dell inspiron computer crashed a few months back. Well, we are having a yardsale on Saturday and I just wanted to know if i should sell it or just trash it. The harddrive is crashed. If it had a new harddrive, it would work as good as new, but as of right now it's worthless. I just was curious if you think it would sell, how much should i ask, or should I just trash it. I'm not really a computer expert and I know some folks know how to tinker with broken stuff so i just need input. Thanks

 

[thebowman]

I personally would not sell it, you can get a new hard drive cheap on ebay and all it takes is unscrewing a couple screws and pull out one hard drive and replace. It's easy, I did it in about 15 mins start to finish

 

[tabnat80]

Well, we already bought a new one. So, I dont' want to put any more money into the old one.

 

[janetupnorth]

Depends on the model for price...do you have a serial # on it - I can look up ALL the specs for you including mfg. date.

 

[DebbieJ]

I would replace the hard drive and keep it as a 2nd computer.

 

[janetupnorth]

I would replace the hard drive and keep it as a 2nd computer.

Depending on how old it is (I was reserving judgment on finding the model/date), I would do the same thing!

 

[tabnat80]

It was an inspriron 5190. I got it about 4-1/2 years ago. I ended up selling it at the yardsale for 20 bucks. I was just happy someone got it. Maybe they can get it working again. thanks for the input.

 

[janetupnorth]

It was an inspriron 5190. I got it about 4-1/2 years ago. I ended up selling it at the yardsale for 20 bucks. I was just happy someone got it. Maybe they can get it working again. thanks for the input.

They'll get it working fine probably and got a bargain!
You could have sold it on E-bay for much, much more.

 

[Jean DeVries]

Just a waring for everyone. I'm sure you already know this, but for those who may be considering selling a computer.

Please sell it WITHOUT the hard drive. I'm taking an Information Security and Intelligence class now, and it's amazing what you can get off a "broken" hard drive with shareware that's free on the internet. If you have EnCase software, used by professional digital forensics experts, you can find even more. We scrubbed a "broken" hard drive the other night and found credit card numbers, passwords, and a bunch of things I'm sure the person who previously owned the hard drive didn't want us to find.

Even scrubber/wiper programs aren't 100% effective against this software. We've been told dozens of times that the only complete way to destroy info on a hard drive is to just burn it.

Hard drives are easy to remove and set on fire in your driveway. The rest of the computer can then be sold, good as new. The new owner can buy their very own hard drive for pretty cheap.