No Stupid Questions

The easiest options in order of effectiveness, and how to bypass them:

1. Do nothing.
2. Reset Windows or erase all files you don't want to be found. To recover from this you need a specialised piece of software that will recover the files, but not the names or locations, so while the actual data is easily recoverable, the person would need to sieve through most files you've had in your PC since forever with no order.
3. Zero the disk, my way to do this would be to boot a Linux USB and run for example dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda, this will delete EVERYTHING on that disk, including windows, partition table and the bootloader. The way to recover from this involves specific hardware and a sterile lab, unless the authorities are investigating you it's very unlikely someone will recover from this.
4. Multiple passes with zeroes and random data, the way I would do this is the same as above but use /dev/urandom for the if parameter, run it multiple times, then run once with zeroes. Theoretically it could be possible for the same lab as before to recover some data if the machine ran out of entropy and didn't wrote actual random data, and someone could predict the random data and compensate for it on the residual magnetic field, but it's highly unlikely. Almost no one would be able to recover this, and if someone can they will charge A LOT.
5. Physical destruction, e.g. drill a hole or smash the disk for an HDD, break the chips for an SSD.

All of that being said, why throw it away? Why not sell it or use it to self-host something cool like a media centre or a steam machine if the laptop is good enough.

I like to take the hard drive(s) out and either drill holes in them or beat them to pieces with a big hammer.

Dear old Dad worked in IT, and he had a clearly marked "hard drive eraser". It was a 20 pound sledgehammer.

Laughing at all the Hollywood shit in this thread. A single pass erase (or ATA Secure Erase, if they are SSDs that support the command) is more than enough. Nobody is going to waste time and money recovering data of unknown provenance from a landfill.

Hammer, then marinate for atleast 30 mins in soya sauce, onion, garlic, herbs, then bbq, eat and poop in 3 different bathrooms across the city. Pro tip, sprinkle with olive oil each side while on the grill.

If you just do the simple one-pass zero-ing out, suggested a few times here, the data is only recoverable in theory. There are labs that do it, but they charge thousands of USD for a drive and giving limited results.

Unless you are being actively targeted by deep pockets, that's plenty good enough.

1. There are companies you can pay to physically shred your disk drives. You have to be able to trust them of course for this to work.

2. Or if you want to DIY, you can drill or smash your drives. Just wear eye protection, etc. Making the drives inoperative like this is the only thing I'd trust, but you can also software-wipe them first.

You've said you're intending to throw these laptops away, so physical destruction is quickest and simplest.

But, if you're intending to sell or give these away for someone else to use, zeroing each sector is probably 'good enough' for your purpose (as someone else has always said).

If you really want to make it harder, you can use something like the Boot and Nuke bootable Linux disk for the job, as it also has the option of multiple passes, using zeroing and/or binary random shit for each sector. Just grab the free for personal use version.

Geez at the answers in the thread. Boot off a USB drive with Linux, right click the HD, and simply format the drive. Not a quick format, you may have to unselect that. You'll know because a quick format will take seconds, a full format will take an hour (depending on the size of course).

Then donate the laptops. Donation place should be able to install Linux. Most people don't need much laptop.

It depends how badly you need that data to never see the light of day again. Most likely, you'll be fine to erase the drives with secure erase options (where it writes 0 and then 1 to the whole drive, and back and forth a few times depending on settings), but if you really really need to 100% guarantee there's absolutely no chance of recovery, then you'll need to destroy the drives physically

Stop 🛑... Hammer time 🔨🕓🖥️

Or 🧲 or 🪓

💀

If you live near an active volcano, dumping them directly into the core should be pretty effective

I work at an electronics recycling facility and all laptops that are recycled are completely sanitized and properly disposed of as e-waste. Look around for a local recycling center and check for an R-2 certification, if they have one they will take out any identifiers and do passes on drives via a sanitization device to ensure that the whole thing is completely devoid of all data.

If they are Windows and have Bitlocker encrypt the whole drive and throw away the key. If not get Veracrypt for free and encrypt the entire drive. Once the drive is fully encrypted and has no backup key you can just trash it. If this was commercial use I would then send it to a third party to be certified destroyed.

Since no one mentioned it: VCR tape eraser.

Basically just an electromagnet that oscillates because it's running directly from AC current.

With an extension cord you could erase all the hard drives in a computer lab just waving the eraser vaguely where the drives are.

Physical destruction is better though.

Use vericrypt to encrypt the drive with a long random password and immediately forget said password

Just turn on disk encryption.

Smuggle the laptops into the cargo bay of Elon's next Starship launch.

HDDs have some strong magnets inside that I like to salvage. Once I have those, I put the shiny plates into a ziplock bag and smash them.

Here's a good article from Tom's: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/secure-erase-ssd-or-hard-drive

'zeroing' every sector is probably 'good enough' for mechanical hard drives.

if the laptops are functional:

boot a target laptop to a windows install disk or usb. at the first prompt, hit SHIFT-F10 to open a command window.

diskpart

list disk

select disk 0
(laptop internal drive should be disk 0)

clean all
(this will take time. on an older laptop, up to maybe an hour per 250gb of hdd capacity.)

exit

power off.

if they're NOT functional laptops:

remove the hdd (search the make and model at yt for guides), connect to another pc (via usb adapter) or internal inside a dt. boot to that system's normal windows, run diskpart from an admin command prompt.. do the same as above but note that in this case: IT WON'T BE DISK 0 -- be sure to 'select' the correct disk

if one of them happens to be an ssd. instead of wiping it (this method isn't for ssd, btw), get an enclosure for it (as little as $8-10) and use it as an external disk.