A good repair shop shouldn't look to the contents of your hard disk when replacing a dvd-drive.
There might be exceptions such as reporting child porn they happen to stumble upon to the police. If those pictures are on the desktop of the only userid you gave them access to test the machine, it's obvious, but I wouldn't call that snooping.
Just remove all really sensitive files from the machine before taking it to them. Put them on a USB-stick and keep that safely at home.
Kees
I have my laptop under warranty, & need to take it in for repair of its dvd drive. In preparation for undertaking the all too-important backup (thanks Bob), I also wish to avoid a problem that occurred previously—very probable IT support staff performing undesirable sniffing around in my hard disk.
At that time, I was under considerable time pressure to take the (other) machine in for repair, & neglected to think of it, until too late. Now I have more time (& a different machine), and do not wish to make the same mistake.
What can I do to prevent very probable snooping by IT support staff? In other words, some preventive security, only vis-a-vis IT support staff, as opposed to possible unwarranted hackers?

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