I have a couple of old laptops lying around and want to throw them away, but have been cautious to do so because of privacy concerns of data still on the hard drives. What is the best way to wipe them? Or should I take them out and physically destroy them?
They are running windows vista and 10 I think.
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.