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http://www.securityfocus.com/brief/888 : "A computer forensics specialist has a message for security-minded computer users: A single wipe will make drives impossible to read. In research published on Thursday, auditor Craig Wright tested the ability of a special type of electron microscope...

Are you referring to "erasing" the freespace - or "wiping" the entire disc? I do a freespace erase every night (7 passes) and it's always done by morning (can't really give you hard and fast time estimates for any given particular size). My computer has a 160GB HD. I always let it run when I'm...

Have you tried re-naming the file before attempting to erase it? IOW, if the filename is "Here I Am.avi", re-naming it to "Gone.avi"? It's been my experience that a lot of the .avi files out there resist being deleted OR erased for some reason (hooked to a running process somewhere, FI). Pete

A single pseudorandom pass is sufficient for all purposes other than evading examination by three-letter government agencies, so I don't understand why your emphasis is on the 35-pass Gutmann wipe. And if it is that sensitive, then quit worrying about how long it will take and just do it. Pete

"When a file does not fill up the last cluster (group of sectors) it is using, an incomplete sector is filled in with a bit of what is in RAM, so this part is called RAM slack. The rest of the unused sectors in the cluster are called drive slack, since any info in them is what was written on the...

You're not looking very hard in the "Help" section of Eraser, are you? From Contents/Configuration/Erasing: "Detailed descriptions of the overwriting methods and the reason why one should include the cluster tip area when erasing unused disk space can be found from the Advanced Topics. You may...

Not dumb at all. To the best of my knowledge, Eraser attempts to find freespace in all files on a given computer, whether they're "in-use" or "locked" or not. (It doesn't differentiate based on what the files' purpose or use is, IOW). When it can't get "in" to such a file, it produces a...

I have a 160GB HD on my computer here. Since I have absolutely no use whatsoever for that much HD space, I took the freeware program TrueCrypt and created a file container the size of which only left me with slightly under 21GB of freespace. (See screenshot). Eraser doesn't "see" any freespace...

Try to make sure that you do, indeed, get all the "index.dat's" on your machine - otherwise they won't be erased. On my machine(s) here, I use Index.dat.Suite ( http://support.it-mate.co.uk/?mode=Prod ... x.datsuite ), which finds all "index.dats" on the computer (including in other profiles, if...

I make it a practice to do freespace wipes only when (a) I am not going to be using the computer for anything else and (b) only after I shut down all non-essential running processes in TaskManager. The purpose of that is two-fold: Closing all un-necessary running processes allows more to be...

Eraser doesn't erase your OS - it erases either individual files or the freespace on your drive. You need to thoroughly read and understand the Eraser "Help" section before attempting to use the program. From the sound of things, your computer's in really bad shape - you may wind up having to...

Glad you got it resolved. Pete

It also wouldn't hurt to let us know exactly WHICH version of Eraser you're using and what your OS is. Pete

You might have bailed out of the "erase" process incorrectly, thus leaving a huge Temp file on your computer. There're two ways to fix this - (1) right-click the recycle bin and from the context menu select "Erase Recycle Bin (1-pass pseudorandom data)" , let it run with OUT messing with it...

Yes, Eraser is "compatible" with CCleaner - I run CCleaner (among other things) prior to freespace wipes [i]daily[/] here. Pete

From the main Eraser interface, click on "Help"/"Help Topics"/"Index" tab and type in "Explorer" and read the "Drag and Drop" section. Pete

Hi, Gralfus! The only way I could make it hang here was to manually go through Explorer (without having the TC volume - "My Volume" - mounted) and trying to either defrag or erase freespace on "My Volume" itself. It won't do it - or if it will, I 've never left it trying long enough to...

Well, I use it here daily on my own computer, and I'm not seeing any bad sectors showing up. Whether it's affecting the longevity of the HD itself is debatable. I'll run some diagnostics and get back to you (I'm going to try to find out how many hours I've got on this particular HD). Pete

I use Eraser to both erase free space within my TruCrypt volume and to securely erase files within the TruCrypt volume - it works fine. I believe the only caveat there is that the TC volume needs to be dis-mounted when running a freespace wipe on the rest of the computer (it takes much...

As far as the swap file issue goes, here I just have a checkmark in "Edit/Preferences/General" where it says "Enable clearing of paging (swap) file at shutdown". I really don't understand why you'd want to make a separate "scheduled task" out of swap file erasure? As far as the batch-file...