Revision as of 10:03, 20 August 2025

Repurposing and recycling e-waste is good for the planet, and the pocket.

I have a standard procedure when receiving computers that are to be repurposed e.g. for family or school etc.

Before assigning the machines to people I perform the following:

alter the BIOS / EFI settings to temporarily disable Secure Boot^{[note 1]}
live boot Linux from a ThumbDrive ^{[note 2]}
plug in a large external USB drive.^{[note 3]}
identify the computer disks with

lsblk

map the drive partitions to text file for later use

sudo sfdisk -L > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-hostname-fdisk.txt

backup the computer disk drive images for NVME disk

dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-hostname.lz4

backup hard disks drives e.g.

 dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-sda.lz4

alternatively backup partitions such as the boot/efi, os e.g. <ref group="note">Backing up the whole disk is easier to use for restoration but slower of course. If you have plenty of storage a complete image makes sense. I store my backups in a NAS and I have 56T Bytes of capacity (or I used to),M.ref>

 dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-sda1.lz4
 dd if=/dev/sda2 bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-sda2.lz4
 dd if=/dev/sda3 bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-sda3.lz4

- tests that I use to check out laptops:

live boot of Linux (e.g. lubuntu as it seems to have latest drivers)
- phoronex test suit

notes

↑ On DELL F2 and Intel NUC holding down F2 during boot takes you to the BIOS. F10 on NUC and F12 on DELL takes you to the boot menu.
↑ I have PXE boot working in my laboratory and will be able to launch live images from there instead of media boot. My collection of images are not quite there yet and in this case PXE network booting would need to be enabled in the laptops.
↑ I prefer an ext4 formatted NVME disk caddy I purchased from Ugren and a 2 TB NVME M.2 disk for performance and size.

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
 * alter the BIOS / EFI settings to temporarily disable Secure Boot<ref group="note">On DELL F2 and Intel NUC holding down F2 during boot takes you to the BIOS. F10 on NUC and F12 on DELL takes you to the boot menu.</ref>
 * live boot Linux from a ThumbDrive <ref group="note">I have PXE boot working in my laboratory and will be able to launch live images from there instead of media boot. My collection of images are not quite there yet and in this case PXE network booting would need to be enabled in the laptops.</ref>
-** backup the disk drive image (either whole disk or each partition)
+* plug in a large external USB drive.<ref group="note">I prefer an ext4 formatted NVME disk caddy I purchased from Ugren and a 2 TB NVME M.2 disk for performance and size.</ref>
+* identify the computer disks with
+ lsblk
+* map the drive partitions to text file for later use
+ sudo sfdisk -L > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-hostname-fdisk.txt
+* backup the computer disk drive images for NVME disk
+ dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-hostname.lz4
+* backup hard disks drives e.g.
+  dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-sda.lz4
+* alternatively backup partitions such as the boot/efi, os e.g. <ref group="note">Backing up the whole disk is easier to use for restoration but slower of course. If you have plenty of storage a complete image makes sense. I store my backups in a NAS and I have 56T Bytes of capacity (or I used to),M.ref>
+  dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-sda1.lz4
+  dd if=/dev/sda2 bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-sda2.lz4
+  dd if=/dev/sda3 bs=512 | lz4 > /media/user/transfer-disk/2025-09-19-sda3.lz4
 ** tests that I use to check out laptops:

Repurposing computer equipment: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:03, 20 August 2025

notes

references

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