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Eraser wasn't intended to completely wipe a hard drive, just known files or freespace. DBAN is the tool for completely wiping a hard drive. I'm not sure why you are nervous about the bootdisk. The only thing to be sure of when you use it is that you are wiping the correct drive, since they are...

Some people "believe" that putting tinfoil on their heads protects them from alien mind control, so what? I work on the other side of file erasure (data recovery and computer forensics), there are tools to recover live RAM, since there is definitely something there to grab. But I have not found...

Computers store information on hard drives, USB drives, floppy disks, etc. RAM is volatile, and is cleared completely every time the computer is turned off. A new hard drive may not always be as new as you think. I have purchased items off the shelf that were sold as new, but had been...

You need to download DBAN, not Eraser. DBAN can be had from this link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfile ... _id=439240 (The homepage is http://dban.sourceforge.net/) You will see a list of files on this page. If you want to make a floppy disk version of DBAN, download the...

Yes and no. Erasing unused space will overwrite any files that were previously deleted. If they are still in the recycle bin, then they will *not* be overwritten. If there are temp files scattered about the drive, then those will also *not* be overwritten, as they are not unused space. The...

No, the file itself is visible (has a name) on your hard drive, and thus not freespace. You would have to select the file deliberately and ask Eraser to overwrite it. For example, you could have a file named "blob" that is a TrueCrypt container. Were you to open the file with a text editor...

I haven't used Cryptainer, only TrueCrypt. A TrueCrypt drive and a hidden drive within it are both held as a single visible file that appears to consist of random bits. The visible file can be overwritten by Eraser if you choose to do so, thereby destroying the file and any drives (and...

Can you provide an example of what you mean? Your description seems kind of vague. For example, what is a virtual directory? There could be many meanings. If it is an area of the drive that can be accessed normally, then Eraser can overwrite it. If it is a TrueCrypt drive, then it exists...

If you are concerned, you can always reboot the computer and start again. Not sure why the video signal isn't coming through. You can set it to just one pass, but the default is 3 passes using Department of Defense short method. I've not used verbose, so I'm not sure if that is an odd message...

Eraser has an option to specifically overwrite the cluster tips. There is no way (or reason) for the operating system to protect those. It protects the swap space because it would be chaotic not to do so. I have not verified through experimentation that Eraser *actually* overwrites cluster...

Yes, the swap space is protected as long as windows is active. That is why it is a boot-time option in Eraser to wipe that space. It makes the shutdown process take a little longer, but that's about it. I just do one pass of pseudorandom data. The freespace wipe is for overwriting the...

If Windows 2000 did what you describe, it would double the hard disk space needed to do anything. Short answer: no, it doesn't do this. Windows does use swap space as a form of virtual memory, but Eraser can be set to overwrite the swap file when you do a shut-down and restart. Unicode...

As with all such programs, it is best to conduct experiments to see if the results are what you expect. With Windows, many times files are located in multiple locations, as well as temp files that contain portions or complete versions of files. Just because you erase a file in one location does...

Typically speaking, once a computer recognizes that a sector is bad, it is marked as such and can't be written to. I think the Spinrite program from Steve Gibson tries to recover such sectors, that could then be overwritten. However, from a normal-level security approach, you don't need to...

Since there were some questions regarding how Eraser and DBAN interact with CDRW media, I did a few experiments with CDRW media using Nero and a variety of settings. I then tried to run Eraser on the files, and ultimately tried to run DBAN on the media. The results are below. Tools...

It is fine. Even one pass renders data unrecoverable. A lot of hullabaloo has been generated over reports from years ago using older media. Today, using professional forensics programs, I have been unable to recover any useful data after even one pass of pseudorandom data. You can overwrite...

The best way to know this is to try it and test the results. Create an image of the media using "dd" or another forensic imaging program, then examine the image in a hex editor. If you chose to overwrite with zeros, then all you should see are zeros. If you overwrite with psuedorandom data, then...

Yes, that is it. Removing the header and footer areas of most files renders them unrecoverable and unrecognizable. This is not true of every kind of file though. Some repeat the header information throughout the file, so snippets may still be recoverable. Text also would be recoverable, so this...

...as long as you not only erase the visible files, but also do a freespace wipe. However, since you want the whole drive wiped, you may want to use DBAN instead. If you are trying to erase the drive that Eraser is located on, that won't work very well, will it. It can't erase itself or Windows...

Depends on what you mean by "wiping out my harddrive". Eraser can only erase the files and freespace, so it will not affect the formatting of the drive. DBAN is a different product and is used to overwrite the entire drive, or specific partitions. If a partition is overwritten with DBAN, I...