How do you destroy all information on a hard drive before giving your old computer to someone? -- C.P., Tulsa.

Don Singleton, president of the Tulsa Computer Society, said when the group's Refurbishing Computers Project receives a donated computer from the public, the first thing done is checking it out to see how well it works, identifying any problems and determining its speed, memory and available hard-drive space. Once this is determined, its hard drive is removed and a completely new operating system with application software already installed is transferred over. Nothing the donor left on it is available. This procedure is documented at helpingtulsa.org/howto -- and the society offers donors a "drive setup disk" to run on their machines to un-partition the drive, repartition it as one big drive and run a scan-disk on it so that nothing from previous software is visi ble. He suggested you check out commercial data-erase software.

Ultra-X, Inc -- QuickTech HD Clean -- www.uxd.com/qthdclean.shtml-- the ultimate hard drive data erase tool. "Typical formatting of a hard disk drive does not remove or erase your private data! When you format a disk, partition a hard drive or even delete a file, your data still remains on the disk. There are many hard drive recovery tools on the market that can recover your data. QuickTech HD Clean eliminates data recovery by securely erasing all your data."

White Canyon Software -- WipeDrive 3.3 -- www.whitecanyon.com/wipedrive.php -- deleting a file, partitioning a disk or formatting a hard drive will not erase your data. WipeDrive securely overwrites and removes all your information, giving you peace of mind that you will not be the victim of identity theft. Don't give away data with an old PC. If you don't erase it before selling or donating a computer, it can be stolen or even used against you.

CyberScrub LLC -- CyberScrub Professional Edition 3.5 -- www.cyberscrub.com/homegoogle.html -- removes all evidence of your online activity, erases previously "deleted" files beyond recovery, purges all traces of Peer2Peer applications and securely destroy e-mail. CyberScrub is a high-level military-grade security application designed to help you completely eliminate sensitive information from your computer, protect your Internet privacy and enhance system performance. CyberScrub also func tions as a wonderful clean up utility by removing useless files (.bak, .chk, etc) that slow down your computer. It defeats forensic recovery tools.

O&O Software -- O&O SafeErase -- www.oo-software.com/en/products/oose/index.html -- offers reliable erasure of security-sensitive files, giving you the ultimate in data protection. With O&O SafeErase, even hackers and data spies cannot restore your safely erased files. O&O SafeErase does not simply delete your files; it annihilates them using approved and recommended methods. If Windows NT, 2000 or XP is your system, O&O prevents unauthorized access to files.

Submit Action Line questions to 699-8888 or by e-mail at phil.mulkins@tulsaworld.com. Action Line pursues consumer complaints submitted with photocopies of documentation to Tulsa World Action Line, P.O. Box 1770, Tulsa, OK 74102-1770.