IF YOU think it is safe to store private and confidential information in your laptop even with security passwords and encryption, well, think again.

Hong Kong actor Edison Chen, 27, learnt it the hard way when racy photos of him and other starlets such as Gillian Chung, Cecilia Cheung and Bobo Chan were posted online.

The scandal rocked Chinese showbiz, after netizens realised that they were real photos which were stolen after Chen sent his notebook to a company for repair last year.

If you do not wish to suffer a similar fate, data experts say the simplest and most effective measure is to remove the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) before sending it for servicing.

Mr Darric Hor, Singapore's country manager for IT security company Symantec, urges users to do a regular backup of "all important information" on external HDDs.

He also advises users to practise good security habits such as using encryption software for confidential files, so that when the computer crashes, the files remain secure during repair.

Even then, experts caution that it is still possible to recover data from disks that have been formatted several times over.

In fact, they say the only sure way to eradicate the "identity prints", or information from computers, for good is by smashing the hard drives into bits.

IT expert Prem Raj, 38, said: "Deleting files in your computer doesn't really 'remove' the files or data permanently."

He explains that deleting files or formatting a hard disk merely deletes the information regarding the files? location.

Mr Raj suggests: "The best policy is to keep sensitive data on a removable media such as a CD, DVD-ROM or a thumb drive and wear it like a locket."