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What’s the deal with the abundance of eBay listed laptops lacking drives? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 4 months ago by Gullible@sh.itjust.works to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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I’m starting to get back into the swing of tech at large, and found a business laptop that fits my needs for a portable low power emulation device. When I look to buy it secondhand, because I don’t intend to burn money or the environment unnecessarily, I find dozens of extremely cheap listings without drives. Are these secondhand from businesses removing and drilling the drives or is there something else going on?

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[-] Nollij@sopuli.xyz 7 points 4 months ago

I'm assuming you're in the US and looking at Dell Latitude, HP EliteBook, or Lenovo Thinkpad, possibly on eBay from a recycling company.

Many large corporations buy these with a 3 year warranty, and stretch those to 4 or 5 years unless they break. Once the devices are too old, they go through a decom process. This usually includes sanitizing the data. Depending on the corporation, this could mean a secure erase, or it could mean physical destruction with a grinder. Then they send it to a recycler or refurbisher, who pays them a pittance for the remaining value. It's also why they are frequently missing the hard drive caddy - the difference in value is minimal, so they remove it the fastest way possible.

Power bricks and docks are usually usable on other models/generations, so those aren't sent to recycling until they are useless. That's why you often see laptops listed without bricks.

this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
26 points (93.3% liked)

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