QUESTION: My company buys new computers about every year and a half.

As staff we are given the option of 'borrowing' the old PCs which we can use at home for personal purposes as long as we don't load any illegal software on them.

Now the company wants to once again replace our loaner PCs with newer 'old' ones.

On the computers they will take back they say they will re-format the hard drives, re-load the original operating systems and donate them to a local charity or to schools if they want them.

The PC I have been using is now filled with my personal items which are no business of anybody else's.

I can copy off all the files and e-mails but I don't know where this PC will end up or how secure the re-formatting process will be at removing all the data?

Also, how much information can be gleaned from my PC if, for example, I was to drop dead?

Hey it happens to everybody sooner or later.

ANSWER: You would be faced with the same problem if you were selling your computer.

Nobody wants to buy a computer in which the hard drive is empty because that way they don't get an operating system, such as Windows, or any software to use and how else can they tell if it works?

So sellers, if they know how, often re-format the hard drive and replace the operating system using the original disks.

But even running an Fdisk and Format doesn't guarantee the complete removal of the data that was there before.

I recently read an article about some computer enthusiasts who retrieve hard drives from a special section of a dump near Boston.

It seemed that the hard drives in nine out of ten of the computers they recovered still contain the information left on them by their previous owners including, in one case, several years of tax records.

Last weekend when, along with a lot of other people, I went to a dump site to throw away my post-hurricane garbage I noticed some people gathering together a number of computers whose owners probably thought they didn't work anymore and now they were safely disposed of.

I wondered how much personal information was going to be available to the scavengers who would eventually end up with them.

Windows by design keeps enormous amounts of history and numerous copies of data files within its operating and registry system.

Simply erasing a few files will never remove all the other information stored by Windows in hidden folders and various index.dat files.

All of this data is automatically recorded to the hard drive at various locations including the Swap file, Windows Registry plus many hidden file traces on the hard disk drive.

The solution

So what can you do? The answer is that there are programs that will effectively wipe your hard drive and by this I mean destroy the information contained on it more thoroughly than a re-format does.

If you want to try the one supposedly used by the US Department of Defence, try Wipe Drive which can be found at www.frontiersolutions.biz/accessdatawipedrive.htm.

However, if you don't want to pay for a program to clean wipe your hard drive another approach is to use an application which is designed to make your files unreadable by writing over them with random data.

For this try File Vaporizer at www.geneffects.com/filevaporizer/

I can tell you that at ComputerWorks I have been asked to clean up and sort through the contents of a computer which belonged to someone who died. Computers can be very personal to their users and I recommend this approach if you can trust the integrity of the person carrying out the task.

Be proactive

Believe it or not there is even a free utility that you can load onto your computer that will erase all the files, letters and pictures that you don't want anyone to see after you are dead.

Not only that, it can be set up to send e-mails that you have prepared ahead of time, perhaps containing a last message for your loved ones or your lawyer, and to protect sensitive files by encrypting or destroying them.

It can even be used to send your considered thoughts to those people who you didn't dare tell what you thought of them while you were still alive!

The utility is called, I kid you not, Dead Man's Switch. It can be found at http://www.Arsware.org in the left column under Utilities.

I haven't used it myself so you're on your own with it but it could be what you're looking for.

Be careful how you set it up.

Reportedly one user went on a longer than anticipated vacation and came back to find that his computer had assumed he was dead and acting on his instructions had already e-mailed a variety of messages he had prepared and erased all his adult content files.

On the same site there is also available a utility called Stealth Scrubber which is designed to clean out personal information and junk files and is advertised as a one-stop script for your privacy.

When my ComputerWorks clients are concerned about maintaining the privacy on their computers, especially computers used by several members of a family, I usually recommend Window Washer by Webroot.

It's not free but it's an excellent product which can be found at www.webroot.com/wb/products/windowwasher/index.php

I recommend it also because it cleans out Temporary Internet Files and other detritus and apparently also shreds the files beyond recovery if that matters to you.

I've seen ordinary PCs bogged down with 15,000 records accumulated from ordinary use of the Internet and all taking up valuable space and resources.

James W. Lapsley of ComputerWorks, specialises in PC repairs, upgrades and advice for the home and small office user. ComputerWorks welcomes your questions and comments. Send your PC questions by e-mail to computerworks@logic.bm or by phone to 293-0992.