By Kim Komando for USA Today
San Francisco, CA -- Question: I'm going to trade in a laptop I'm not using anymore for a new iPad.
How can I remove all of my personal information before taking the laptop to the store?
Answer: Most people don't realize that when files are deleted, they aren't really gone.
The operating system removes the link to the file and marks the space free.
Until it is overwritten with new information, that file is still on your hard drive and can be recovered by anyone with a little know-how.
I recommend using the free program Eraser to permanently delete your data. Eraser writes over files with meaningless data, making the files unrecoverable.
The program offers many options for deleting files.