<A last thought on this for you legal guys out there! Would'n it be <sensible to design some kind of 'declaration of trust' regarding private <content of equipment. So that the receivers can be held responsable for No, you that declare you are repsonsable where you formally were not. You then place yourself in a position of trust for the data. If your disk cleaning efforts were not adaquate and someone read them and misused the findings YOU ARE IN TROUBLE and the original owner can sue you for breech of contract. Liability is then directed to you, and the original owner then has limited libility, both the donator and thir clients can sue you for cause. Don't go there unless you want to make it a business. <any irrisponsable disclosure of private data. And also that the donator <has signifies that he has (had) knowledge about the informational <content of his donation. In serious cases a Judge may decide who has <acted liable. But most of ours would live by such a contact and it may <endorse reliable image about the restoration and preservation of classic <hardware & software. If it's important, maybe. Consider that no responseable source of significant equipment would leave mission critical data or files behind unless the equipment were inoperable. In that case you may wish to operate as an agent to that donator... be careful as you are taking the role of a contract engineer to them and if you fail to recover the data and loose it or fail to remove it totally you may be in trouble. Again desireable equipment may warrent. I did some checking and here is my lawyer friends call: You get a system with stuff on the disk. They (donator) failed to perform due dilligence and due care in maintaining confidence. IF and unless there is a provable agreement that data is fair game. The however of this is while they may loose in a suit, everyone would in the process so long as there is not malicious intent on the part of the person that recieved the equipment. They (donator) would injure themselves, their clients and it would cost to defend. In short you can be sued, they would likely loose, it's costly to win on both sides and the would not help anyone and would hut everyone. Best bet is if you find crap on the disk and have not been asked or told, delete it and forget it. Allison