Algeria AgencyIT consulting & support
The machine you do not repair: wiping, reselling, scrapping
A dead machine leaves the building with its disk. What has to come out first, what it is still worth, and why the cupboard costs more than the skip.
The companion article decides whether to repair: the decision is about days rather than dinars, the disk leaves with the machine, the loan machine is the real deliverable. It stops at the moment the answer is no.
This page starts there. Once the decision is taken there is still an object, and that object holds everything the person who used it put there over four years.
Three possible destinations and one common act. It can be sold, given away or scrapped — and in all three cases the same thing has to come out of it before it leaves the building.
The fourth destination is the one we see most often and it is not on the list: the cupboard. That is section 9, and it costs the most for the least obvious reason.
What leaves the building leaves with its contents
A machine taken out of service is not an empty object. It holds four years of documents, the passwords saved in the browser, the person’s mail, and often a phone backup.
That is not an abstract observation. We bought second-hand machines on the Algerian market to equip a workshop, and two of them still held the previous business’s files — quotations, a customer list, and a mail session still open.
Nobody had behaved badly. The machine had failed, it had been replaced, and the repairer had resold it for parts after changing a power supply. The disk worked perfectly and interested nobody.
The rule that follows is short and holds for all three destinations: **the disk comes out of the machine before the machine leaves the building.** Physically, with a screwdriver, and it stays with you until you have decided what to do with it.
That rule has the advantage of being verifiable by somebody who knows nothing about computers. A disk on a shelf is a fact; a wipe performed by somebody else is an assertion, and section 3 explains why it is more fragile than it looks.
Deleting is not wiping, and formatting is not either
Three acts carry similar names and do different things. Thirty seconds distinguishes them and it avoids most of the unpleasant surprises.
Deleting a file removes its name from an index. The content stays on the disk until something writes over it, and free software recovers it in minutes. That is what everybody does and it protects against nothing.
Formatting rewrites the index. It is better and still insufficient on mechanical disks: common recovery tools pull back a large share of the files from a quickly formatted disk.
Genuinely wiping means writing over the whole surface, or — on modern flash-based disks, which is most machines bought in the last five years — using the manufacturer’s secure-erase command, which destroys the internal key and makes the whole thing unreadable in seconds.
The practical point that follows: on a recent machine, a correct wipe takes under a minute from a free tool or from the system’s settings. On an older machine with a mechanical disk, allow several hours — that is the procedure’s real cost and it is what makes people abandon it halfway.
The disk that can no longer be wiped
The case that defeats the procedure is a machine too dead to start. Nothing can be wiped on a computer that will not power up, and that is precisely the situation in which a computer is disposed of.
The solution is mechanical and costs fifteen minutes: the disk is removed and connected to another machine with an enclosure or an adapter, which costs the price of a meal and then serves for years. The wipe is done from the host machine.
When the disk itself is dead — it does not spin, it is not recognised — wiping is no longer possible and physical destruction becomes the right answer. There is nothing dramatic about it: on a mechanical disk, opening the case and removing the platters is enough; on flash, break the chip itself.
Do it yourself rather than having it done, not out of distrust but because it is quicker than organising proof. Two minutes with a screwdriver settle a question that otherwise depends on somebody’s word.
And keep a record: one line in a notebook with the date, the machine’s serial number and what was done to the disk. That line takes twenty seconds and it is the only thing separating a procedure from an intention, particularly on the day a client or an insurer asks.
What the machine is still worth, and to whom
A machine you are not repairing nearly always retains some value, and it is worth knowing which before deciding its fate — so as not to throw away something that would have paid for another’s replacement.
Three values coexist. Use value for a lighter job: a machine too slow for your accounts is perfectly decent for a lookup station or a till. Parts value: the screen, the memory, the power supply, the battery. And resale value as it stands.
The first is the one most businesses neglect and it is the most profitable. Moving a machine down from a demanding post to a light one, rather than buying twice, is the commonest recommendation we make — and it is also why "should we repair it?" does not have the same answer depending on the post the machine will occupy afterwards.
The second matters mainly if your estate is homogeneous, which the equipment-purchase article recommends for its own reasons. A dead machine then becomes a stock of parts for its six twins, and that value is real and immediate.
The third is the weakest and the most overestimated. The second-hand market values four-year-old professional equipment very poorly, and the time spent selling it often costs more than it returns. Selling makes sense for a batch, not for an object.
Giving it away: the commonest act and the least governed
The commonest destination for a machine taken out of service in an Algerian business is neither the skip nor resale: it is a gift. To an employee, to a nephew, to an association, to a school.
That is a very good thing and it should be treated as one rather than discouraged. A four-year-old office machine is an excellent computer for a student, and refusing it in the name of caution is a waste that protects against nothing a correct procedure does not.
What has to accompany the gift is three points. The disk wiped per section 2, or replaced with a cheap new one if you prefer to keep the old. The system cleanly reinstalled rather than "cleaned up". And licences: software bought by the business does not follow the machine, and that detail is settled with one sentence at handover rather than with awkwardness six months later.
Add a line to section 3’s notebook, with the person’s name. That is not bureaucracy: it is what will let you answer, two years on, where the serial number still sitting in your inventory went.
And say plainly what state the machine is in. A gift that fails three weeks later with no warning turns a decent act into a small moral debt, and one sentence at handover avoids it.
The battery, and why it does not leave with the rest
A laptop at the end of its life contains a lithium battery, and it is the only component on this page that poses a physical problem rather than an information one.
A swollen battery — the one that makes a laptop’s base bulge or its keyboard lift — is not stored in a box with the others. It is the only object in this article we ask you to deal with the same day, and the sign is visible without expertise: the laptop no longer sits flat on a table.
What to do is two acts: take it out of the machine, and store it separately, somewhere dry, at room temperature, until it reaches a collection point. Do not pierce it, do not refrigerate it, do not throw it out with the rest.
The recovery route exists in Algeria, essentially through resellers and workshops that replace batteries, and it is more accessible than most people think. A repair workshop will generally take a few without difficulty.
We are aware this paragraph interests almost nobody. It is here because it is the only place in this article where bad storage produces a fire in a cupboard, and because a swollen battery in a box with nine laptops is a situation we have seen more than once.
What is not thrown away: the object and its identity
A machine carries information that is not on its disk and that disposal has to handle separately.
The first is its serial number, which appears in your inventory, on your invoices, sometimes in a maintenance contract. A machine leaving the estate without the inventory being corrected produces a ghost line that will be counted, insured and maintained for years.
The second is its registration in systems: the machine’s account in the directory if there is one, its trade-software licence, its registration with a supplier, its access to the wireless network. Each of those registrations is an access that stays valid for an object that is no longer yours.
The third is the label stuck on it, the one carrying your company name and often a phone number. It comes off before departure, and not only for appearance: it attaches your name to an object whose use you no longer control.
Those three checks take five minutes together and are done at the same moment as removing the disk. The right reflex is to do them in one operation rather than leaving one for later, because "later" is exactly what produces the ghost line.
The maintenance contract and the machine that no longer exists
This point is short, it is never dealt with, and it costs money in dinars every month.
A maintenance or support contract is nearly always based on a number of workstations. Machines that leave the estate stay in that number until somebody says otherwise, and nobody says otherwise — because the person who scraps a machine is not the person who reads the contract.
The same mechanism applies to software licensed per user or per workstation, to equipment insurance if you have it, and to the inventory line feeding your accounting depreciation.
The correction is an agenda item at the quarterly review described in the maintenance article: machines that left since the last review, with their serial numbers. Two minutes a quarter.
It is also one of the rare places in this pillar where hygiene earns money directly rather than avoiding a risk, and that is a useful argument for getting the rest of this page adopted by somebody who is not interested in data protection.
The cupboard of ten dead laptops
Here is this page’s real subject, and it is neither security nor recycling. It is a cupboard, in nearly every business we visit, holding between three and fifteen machines nobody knows anything about.
None of them was put there by decision. Each arrived because scrapping it seemed final, giving it away required wiping it, and reselling it required time. The cupboard is what happens when nobody decides, and it is very comfortable — until the day somebody has to deal with it.
It costs three things. Space, which is the least of them. A risk, because each of those machines still holds its disk and nobody knows which held what. And lost information: after two years nobody can say which still worked, which destroys all of section 4’s use value.
The way out takes half a day and happens once. Take everything out, line the machines up, and make three piles: wiped and good for light use, wiped and good for parts, disks removed and shells to be taken away. Section 6’s batteries go to a fourth place.
And what you count that day is the only honest figure in this article, because nobody publishes it anywhere: what your business has actually set aside without deciding to. Count it, it is yours, and it will tell you whether section 10’s rule is worth adopting.
The rule that prevents the cupboard
Everything above redoes itself in three years if nothing changes in what happens after a failure. One rule suffices, and it is the same family as the one about cables kept in a closed box.
The rule is temporal: a machine taken out of service leaves the building within thirty days, one way or another. Thirty days because it is long enough to arrange a gift or a resale batch, and short enough that the person who unplugged it is still the one who remembers it.
What makes the rule workable is that it comes with a place and a notebook: a named shelf, where the machine is put with its date and a line in section 3’s notebook. A shelf filling up is visible, where a cupboard filling up is not.
The decision itself is taken at the moment of failure rather than thirty days later, because that is the only moment anybody knows the machine’s real condition. One line suffices: wipe and give away, wipe and keep for parts, or destroy the disk and take it away.
Group the removals. A single machine justifies nobody’s journey, ten machines interest a scrap dealer or a workshop, and it is the same logic that makes resale possible: a batch sells, an object gets kept.
What we do, and what we refuse to do
What we refuse first: taking scrapped machines away from a client’s premises without the disk having been removed in front of them. We could do it at the workshop, it would be more convenient for us, and it would turn a verifiable fact into a promise.
We also refuse to invoice a "certified secure wipe" at this scale. On a recent machine the correct wipe is a one-minute command anybody can run, and the certificate accompanying it would add nothing but a line on an invoice.
And we refuse to take away a whole cupboard free of charge without opening it with you. It is the most frequently requested service and it would lose you exactly what section 9 says to recover: knowledge of what those machines were still worth.
What we do fits in half a day: the cupboard emptied with you, the disks removed and wiped or destroyed, the notebook opened with a line per machine, the inventory corrected, and the list of serial numbers to take off your maintenance contract.
And one thing to do this week without us, in ten minutes: open the cupboard and count. You will know immediately whether this page describes your business, and the figure you get exists nowhere else.
What this page will not tell you
We will give you no figure on what businesses do with their dead equipment, and the absence deserves an explanation rather than a silence.
The reason is that the quantity is destroyed rather than recorded. The accounts expensed the machine on the day of purchase, no stock system tracks a scrapped laptop, the repairer who took it away noted nothing, and the object left as waste or as a favour to somebody.
So there is no population to sample: this is not a figure that is hard to obtain, it is a figure nobody has ever produced, in any country, including the ones that publish a great deal.
What we can do instead is what section 9 does: ask you to produce your own in ten minutes with a cupboard and a pencil. It is perfectly reliable for you, it compares to nothing, and it does not need to compare to anything in order to decide something.
It is the same position we take on prices and on lead times elsewhere in this pillar: when a figure does not exist, writing one anyway is worse than saying it does not, and far easier for a reader not to notice.
Frequently asked questions
What should we do with the disk of a scrapped machine?
Remove it physically before the machine leaves the building, and keep it until you decide. A disk on a shelf is a fact anybody can verify; a wipe performed by a third party is an assertion. We bought two second-hand machines that still held the previous business’s quotations and customer list.
Is formatting enough to wipe a disk?
No. Deleting removes a name from an index and the content stays recoverable in minutes. Formatting rewrites the index and still lets a large share of the files be pulled back from a mechanical disk. Wiping means rewriting the whole surface, or running the manufacturer’s secure-erase command on modern flash — under a minute, against several hours on an older disk.
The machine will not start. How do we wipe the disk?
Take it out and connect it to another machine with an enclosure or adapter, which costs the price of a meal and lasts for years. If the disk itself is dead and no longer recognised, wiping is no longer possible: physical destruction becomes the right answer — platters removed on a mechanical disk, the chip broken on flash.
Can we give a machine to an employee?
Yes, and it is very often the best destination for a four-year-old machine. Three things accompany it: the disk wiped or replaced, the system cleanly reinstalled rather than "cleaned up", and one sentence about licences, which belong to the business and do not follow the machine. Add a line to the notebook with the person’s name, for the inventory.
What do we do with a swollen battery?
It is the only object on this page to deal with the same day, and the sign needs no expertise: the laptop no longer sits flat on a table. Take it out of the machine and store it separately, dry, at room temperature, until a collection point — often a workshop that replaces batteries. Do not pierce it, do not refrigerate it, do not put it in the box with the other machines.
What else has to be corrected when a machine leaves?
Four things, in five minutes and at the same moment as removing the disk: the inventory line, the machine’s account and its licences, the label with your name stuck on it, and the number of workstations on your maintenance contract. That last one costs money every month and is settled in two minutes at the quarterly review.
Where we come in
The machines asleep in your cupboard appear nowhere, and their number will surprise you. Each still holds a disk nobody has wiped.
- We remove and wipe the disks in front of you, one at a time.
- We open the disposal log and correct the inventory while we are there.
- We tell you what still resells and what goes for recycling.
Do not ask us for an industry average here: that figure is recorded nowhere, and an invented order of magnitude is worth less than nothing.
Read next
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