I heard from a few similiar cases. It's a very serious scenario, if for example bank account information is revealed to an unauthorized third person.

I can just speak formyself, the best way to secure private files on your computer is to encrypt them with a hard-to-crack algorithm and compress files with password protection too.

I'm using Acronis True Image
(http://www.acronis.com)

There's a well written review of their current distribution.