So you bought a new hard drive and think it’s a good idea to recycle your old one by selling it. Think again. Even though you think you’ve pretty much deleted all your files from your old hard drive, chances are it will still contain some files – even those you thought you might have already lost or erased a long time ago.

Hard drives have partitions that you might not even be aware of, and if you are not careful those data you’ve saved will resurface somewhere in someone else’s hands. To protect any confidential data you might have stored in your computer, get one of those cryptographic file software – the program encrypts the data on your drive so that even if someone is able to access it, he or she won’t be able to make any sense of it.