The file system on the drive x: is not supported

M

markmorgan

New Member
Using Eraser 6.0.7.1893 I attempted to erase a file on our network and got the message "The file system on the drive x: is not supported" where x: is the network share letter in question.

The network share is a SAN (Storage Area Network). It used to work under 5.8.8 - or at least it appeared to erase the files.

Mark.
 
What file system is it using? Most likely, it is one of the Linux filesystems (ext3 probably.) Eraser 6 will not erase files on such filesystems because there is no guarantee the files would be securely erased. Only NTFS and FAT on Windows has this property of "reuse" documented, which Eraser leverages.
 
markmorgan said:
When right clicking the drive and selecting properties in Windows Explorer it claims to be NTFS.
Click to expand...
It may be seen by Windows as NTFS, but whether it is really NTFS is another question. The data sheet to which you usefully link states that the product is designed to be OS-independent, which must mean that it is in some way capable of emulating different file systems. The NTFS bit will not confuse Eraser, but the emulation may; indeed, the NTFS file system is not officially documented by Microsoft, so it must be quite difficult to emulate fully.

The difference between Eraser 5 and Eraser 6 is no doubt explained by the fact that the latter is a complete re-write. There are respects in which Eraser 6 is more conservative (= careful) than its predecessor, because of unfortunate experiences with file system corruption when dealing with some of the more esoteric file structures.

It's difficult to be certain, but I'm inclined to take the same view as Joel about this.

David
 
There was never a guarantee that erasing off a network will work (in addition to getting complaints from your network admin -- but that aside) as by moving the storage system beyond the control of Windows the storage subsystem no longer is mandated (according to Windows NT) to reuse allocated clusters for a file. In essence, this removes any guarantee that erasing from Windows (using Eraser or any other file system using Eraser's approach) will work.

TBH I'm not really familiar with SANs, but my hunch will be that the SAN is misreporting the filesystem on the drive. When I've time, I'd be glad to send you a debug build if you're willing to try. You can add me at my sourceforge email address for MSN: my username is lowjoel.

i.e. users.sourceforge.net, prepend my username and an @.
 
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