I guess this is sort of a dumb question. Here I am with past years' ext hdd's, cd's, etc. I've never had any reason to go back and use any of this stuff--even from the bonus paks. My question is, What do I do with this stuff? I can't legally sell it or even give it away. I guess I could turn the drives in for electronic disposal to be green? (whatever that means in reality). What's everybody else doing? thanks.

Stan

Did you just say "legally" in a digital world?

What prevents you from selling it?

I know of no laws here in the states that prevent a citizen from selling any hardware that they own. Not yet, anyway.

A good thing that we can do with old hardware is to donate to thrift stores, Salvation Army, Goodwill, etc. and you can also ask for a receipt to be used for income tax deduction purposes as well. There may be someone in need of that stuff that is older, never know.

With hard drives, though, I won't let one get out of my hands that hasn't been erased in full and run a program that rewrites all to zeros. Otherwise, I just drill a couple of 1/4" holes through the entire drive and through the platters, and dispose of it. This is to protect things like passwords, credit card numbers, personal info, etc. Don't let that get away from you, the baddies that will take advantage of such are everywhere, unfortunately.

--Mac

Not so long ago I had to get rid of nearly a dozen dead or obsolete PCs. I hated the thought of putting them in the trash. I was fortunate to run across a Native-American-owned recycler in my area (Federal Recyclers, Marietta, Georgia) who specializes in computers and hardware. They reclaim the metals and as much else as possible. NOTHING goes into a landfill. He is also supremely ethical in the matter of hard drives, cell phones, and the like; he makes sure that no personal information gets loose. Look around for someone equally green--they're out there. And take Mac's advice on destroying the drives. You'd be amazed at what can be recovered, even from a notionally formatted HD.

Whenever I've trashed hard drives, which has been somewhat rare - I keep them on a shelf, I've used it as a lesson to my kids as to how they work (if I can get the case open in a reasonable time).

There is a bit of magic for them seeing the platters and the tiny little read/write heads on the arms - and telling them that all of the music, photos, school assignments, etc. actually exist as little magnetic deviations on the platters and the little arms are what put them there and read them off.

Then we take it out to the driveway and get the 2 lb sledge and I tell them to have fun beating the living daylights out of it! I tell them to make sure that each of the platters is bent all to pieces. I've done this with 2 of my 4 kids. They learn and then they have fun (hopefully the learning was fun also).

Scott, you can also use this as an opportunity to teach your kids how to use an electric drill. Just punch a few holes right through the platters and that should do it.

The sledge was safer at their ages. But yes, drilling works as well.

I also have 3 "spares" now ...

I used one to make a backup of my 2013 BIAB/RB external

Number 2 is used as working RB data drives ..
I store my working SEQ files on there.

Number 3, The last one is used as a backup library of all my recorded SEQ's and BIAB files , like an archive.

I had one or two scares with my notebook and NEARLY thought I had lost all my arrangements ....

I believe that if you purchased the FULL version of BIAB on a HD you can indeed sell it to someone.

Rather than drilling holes in a used HD or smashing it with a hammer, use a program that writes 'random' zeros and ones over and over again.

There is an open source Windows app called "eraser": Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows that allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. The patterns used for overwriting are based on Peter Guttmann's paper Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory and are selected to effectively remove magnetic remnants from the hard drive. Other methods include the one defined in the National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual of the U.S. Department of Defense, and overwriting with pseudorandom data. You can also define your own overwriting methods.

There is another I used for Mac, but I forget it's name.

After running a program like this, I can give the drive away to someone who can use it without fear of having my personal data revealed.

But I wouldn't give away or sell the drive with BiaB data on it unless I got written permission from Peter Gannon. It's a "do unto others" thing as well as a copyright thing.

Insights and incites by Notes

In that case would you not also be selling your right to reduced upgrade pricing? I'm not sure that you can have your cake and eat it too.

There is a rather popular hack that I have used with kids in the summer school program. All you need is an old hard drive, platter does not even have to be able to spin, because all that is used is the headarm and its magnetic motor movement. And a low level and cheap laser pen pointer.

Locate the two connections to one of the two coils that move the head arm, found at the end of the flexy, disconnect from the drive's electronics and connect to the + and - speaker terminals of any small audio amplifier.

Now the headarm will move in response to any audio or music played through the amplifier.

Attach a small piece of glass mirror to the head end of the headarm using superglue.

Figure out a way to mount the laser pointer such that it is pointing at the headarm mirror. I use rubber bands to do that.

And, with the lights dimmed, you have a laser lightshow:



More than just watching the pattern that music makes, if you hook up a small mixer and microphone to the amplifier, the kids juswt love to see the patterns they can generate with their own voice.

The one thing that they sometimes can't wrap around is that this is an ANALOG situation and not Digital. Great time to show the difference and explain. At my summer school classes, that's when we get to delve off into an old record turntable, a few old records, and our tone arm and amplifier becomes a sewing needle taped to the corner of a piece of printer paper handheld above the spinning record. And they hear the sound of the record. Then I use one of my laptops and SP/DIF output to let them hear the digital sound of an mp3 file using a song the kids love at the time, and let them hear the digital nasty instead of the actual sound. That leads off into their first delvings into the 1's and zeros thang.

ADULT SUPERVISION on this one at all times, you must ot let them ever try to shine laser light directly into their own or other children's eyes. I pocket the little laser pointer and also disconnect the leads from coil to speaker, taking the alligator leads with me. That way, they can't start it up without resorting to a rather lot of procurement and learning first, avoids that happening when I'm not around.

--Mac

You can, but YOU lose the right to keep on using it, even though you may still have a HD with a version on ....

Otherwise it is the same as an OKE bringing you a HD and you making a COPY for him ......

Thanks for all the input. I don't think that I made myself clear. I'm only referring to my outdated PG Music drives and cds. I was hopefully thinking that maybe someone was recycling them. I don't think that I have any personal info on them. I run the main pgm from the pc and have all the styles, rd's, and rt's on the little ext. hds. I also have some small ext. hds and one large one. I'm not getting rid of any of those. If I wipe the drives, I don't think that PG Music would care how they are disposed of. I'll look into wiping them though. There are some places that buy used electronic stuff. I could probably just give them away to friends and family.

Thanks again,

stan

For outdated pgmusic issued hard drives, I think you could safely just reformat and then sell or give away.

I have wiped a couple and use them for backups, transfers, etc.


--Mac

Thanks Mac. That sounds like the most practical solution. For the disks, a couple of times I bought some top kits and turned some parts on my lathe for tops. They actually spin pretty good, too.

I recently asked PG Support and was told that there is an IMPLIED license with the purchase of PG software, so selling the product(s) terminates your relationship with PG. I use the old drives for specific archival storage such as OTR (Old Time Radio) and mp3 music archives..

Agreed. Just having a hyperthetical discussion here.
let's say I bought 2012 EP for Full price $569 and I sold it for $400. Yes indeed my relationship with PG is over. I no longer have the software. I then take my $400 & add another $169 to it and again buy a full 2013 version for $569. The new version in essence only would cost me the $169 and I do not believe I'd be in violation of anything.It costs $399 to upgrade from 2012 to 2013 if you don't get in on the early sale.The sale is $199.
I wouldn't want to bother with this but I think you legally could.

I agree with this scenario as you are essentially buying a NEW full system/version and not upgrading your (now sold and no longer your's) license .....