I just tried for about a half hour to remove an old hard drive from my last PC which I last used in 2014.
Couldn't get it out.
Honestly I'm not gonna bother further because it's probably gonna end up in a landfill somewhere.
why am I even listening to my dad?!
I'm the tech guy, he's the one that constantly thought his old slow computer and the internet taking a while to load pages where the same problem.
@TonicBH If you're decommissioning it then don't worry about breaking the rest of it
It's a perfect excuse to get the big fun tools out, like oxy-acetylene torches and sledgehammers
@troubleMoney the intent is my dad wants to like, put it out on the curb or something.
I think I might have to persuade him that nobody wants an 11-year-old PC.
(I don't want to keep it, but I'd rather just give it to a computer shop for parts or to Goodwill where they can just wipe it.)
@TonicBH ah, in that case just using the shred command would suffice
Far less fun though
Bonus: It's a prebuilt HP machine so everything's jammed in there so tight that it's hard to remove the drive anyway.
All this because of vague paranoia that "someone might steal your info" or something garbage.