Eraser Questions and Suggestions

[asjones]

I was using Eraser and had a few questions and some big suggestions. Sorry this e-mail got so long, but wanted to go in to a little detail so people knew where I was coming from.


I was looking at putting Eraser on a floppy disk and/or CD so that one could pop it in drive run a batch file and erase all free space on a computer.

I wanted a simple way that I could clear all the free space, but not have to reinstall the OS etc. for donating some computers. In the cases we were looking at we could be fairly sure any programs and data that needed to be removed were already removed from the system. We just wanted to do a wipe of the free space.

In looking it seemed like using ERASERL.EXE was the best choice. I was able to remove a few unneeded files from a copy of the Eraser install directory to get the directory size down to fit on a floppy. However I started wondering what files were truly needed to run just ERASERL or ERASER, or even ERASERD?

This might something good to add to the help file also. The information could be done so that based on "X" setup you need "Y" files. I searched a few times and did not find this information in the help file.

I am assuming there are no problems with running Eraser from a write protected disk (CD or Floppy)? I think that is an important feature to allow by default or command line parameter.

I was surprised that one can not do "eraserl -recycled -disk all" and have the Recycle Bin emptied and then have the entire disk wiped. I would suggest that multiple commands of this type be allowed just so long as Eraser does them in the proper order (Empty first then wipe).

I also noticed what I would call a minor bug: "-disk all" works but "-DISK ALL" and "-disk ALL" do not work and tries and read the A: drive. I would suggest the a drive check be clarified better and "ALL" also be supported.


In playing with the -recycled command I really wish it would erase the Recycle Bin with out asking me. I tried the silent, but I at least one text at the command line saying that it erased the Recycle Bin. Having something like a "-recycled Y" and just text on the command line saying what happened would be helpful and work well if it could be combined with "-disk all". The other possibility is to just adjust how -recycled works with -silent. As according to the help -silent is "No windows". So if -silent is used with -recycled it would just output text on the command line.

Now maybe I am not using it right but nothing seems to happen when "-silent" and "-disk all" are used together.


This suggestion may be very controversial, but I think it could be very useful for some. What about some sort of either wild card -folder support for ERASERL or the ability to say any folder named "X". With support for something like this you one could erase any folder that was called TEMP or maybe with wildcard support it could erase "TEMP" and "Temporary Internet Files".

Now the above list of possible folder names could get rather long so this information may needed to be pulled from a text config file. I have seen other programs that support many command line parameters offer to pull the configuration from a text file. So one would run ERASERL -CONFIGFILE <name.txt>. The text file could have all the command lines parameters and a list of all the wild card directories that could be removed.


Thanks for reading all this. I hope the developers will take my suggestions for future inclusion into eraser.


Alan

 

[Anonymous]

Alan,

In summation:
What you want is a command line based cleaner that does not need to be installed. Sort of use the PC then mop up from a floppy afterward.

On and Off We have been working on a new version of Eraser. I'll add those features into the list. At the moment you can use eraserl and the eraser DLL + a batch file to achive all you asked for.

The batch file can wipe the recycle bin and then do a freespace wipe.
I'll look at a silent option. We are also looking at wiping norton unerase files as well.

EraserD is the 16bit dos version.

Garrett

 

[Anonymous]

However I started wondering what files were truly needed to run just ERASERL or ERASER, or even ERASERD?

For Windows front-ends, you only need the program file (e.g. "eraserl.exe"), and the Eraser library ("eraser.dll").

I was surprised that one can not do "eraserl -recycled -disk all" and have the Recycle Bin emptied and then have the entire disk wiped.

Just use a batch file, something like:

@echo off
eraserl -recycled -queue
eraserl -disk all -queue

The "-queue" parameter makes sure the free disk space is erased after the Recycle Bin.

I also noticed what I would call a minor bug

Only if you're used to DOS, I mean, Windows. Anyway, if someone has some spare time, rewriting the entire "eraserl.exe" doesn't seem like a bad idea...