the big day is here. :)

Ok well, today is the last day of school and then we have a week off for spring break. A few days ago my neighbor moved out of and threw all her stuff out, including her PC. They had removed the cover and although it was old, 2x32mb memory sticks, generic mobo, network card , cdrom drive etc, i could see the HD was still in there, so i picked it up removed the HD and have been waiting for this day now to see whats up with it. What do you people think? Should i go through the HD files and see whats in there and then format or should i just format and have an extra 40GB HD. I have no idea what this thing might have in it, i have no idea if it even works so im a little skeptical but im willing to give it a shot.

I didnt post this on the tech forum because im already familiar with the tech aspects and wanted this to be a discussion with the members here. So anyway thats what im doing today after i finish a test at school.

Be a good neighbor and format it before you try and do anything with it. Besides, there is a chance that it has a virus... you probably want to format it for that fact alone.

Depends. If you wouldn't mind people looking at your personal stuff then do it :)

Just format the thing without reading any of her files.

I booted up with the HD. It had windows 98 installed and on the first boot was going through my devices, i ended up installing none of them. I get in, and all i see is a desktop full of kiddie games. It seems that she wasnt using the pc but rather was used by her daughters or something. i got a screenshot of the desktop and i will be formatting it shortly to install maybe another linux distro.

edit: ethics are important, image removed

Man I hope I find one of your used HDs like that. You're basically taking advantage of someone who doesn't know better. Is there anything on there worth anything? Probably not, but if your HD fell into my lap tomorrow, would you want me to post a screenshot of your desktop for the world to see?

EDIT: DAMMIT... I sent you positive rep.. my bad.

I didnt search for files or anything, i just booted up and saw the desktop was a mess and logged off. Like i said i will be formatting the HD.

Hmm,

Well if we back up the story some, who in their right mind would throw a computer out?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by InvariantLoop

threw all her stuff out, including her PC.

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It's no better than throwing out a credit card statement, and hoping that no one will come across it. Which if someone does, they probably won't shred it.

If InvariantLoop didn't get his hands on that machine, who knows who would. At least he's going to format it and install Linux, or something. Heh. He's doing himself a favor. :cool:


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