More than likely the memory will do you no good if the machine is of any age. An 8 gig hard drive isnt squat anymore, and its probably and IDE anyway. If its SATA, you could always slave it in a new machine for a backup drive I suppose. I saw a hard drive destruction box at a mailbox place today. If your worried about data on the drive, you can always drill holes in the platters, or pass a strong magnetic current over it.