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It would be irresponsible of any secure deletion software developer to 100% guarantee that absolutely nothing could be recovered from a drive. There are just too many things that could go wrong. Faulty write heads, bad sectors, power cuts, user bad practice, backup software, temp files...

The 35 pass Gutmann method was conceived at a time when very old technology pre early 1990’s was employed in hard drives. It was used to allow for the inaccuracy of writing heads fitted to those drives which could result in the head writing slightly to one side of the target data. The accuracy...

If you spend any time studying encryption you will see the term military grade on a lot of products, the term is pointless. Mathematics and science rule in the digital world not the military. Peter Gutmann suggests that pre-determined patterns, such as "military approved" ones could actually...

For most people Erasers default setting of a single pseudorandom pass will be sufficient on any medium except vintage hard drives. This will defeat all software recovery programs and possibly microscopic forensic analysis also. If you are extremely concerned about the intenseness of your...

I know you are a perfectionist Joel and that’s why we love you here but I do wonder about this myself. I have tested Eraser to the best of my ability over a long time and I have never experienced problems like this. Perhaps binolandia might like to wait for the release of Eraser V6 and then...

Welcome to the world of open source software !!! :D People here help because we want to not because we do it as a job. Every system is different. Just try it, perhaps when you go to sleep set Eraser running ! As long as you have relatively modern equipment Eraser is very fast. If you use...

Hi CJ2 Welcome to the eraser forum ! A single pseudorandom pass with Eraser will defeat all software programs and recovery tools. The multiple overwrites are only there to protect you against old hardware and very expensive microscopic recovery techniques. If you are just a normal guy...

Hi Hey come on, nobody found the doggy picture funny ??? :shock: Yes I understand your idea in principle but just while you are testing with software recovery programs it would speed things up for you to just perform a single pass. A single pass has the same effect on software recovery tools...

Oops, I think I have just experienced an epic “fail” ! :oops: I completely forgot about the compression and encryption thing. Stupid really as I remember another thread on here with the same problem. Sorry. :roll: Well done Joel, what took you minutes to solve has had me puzzled for days !

Hi binolandia Thank you for coming back !! After 2 weeks I thought we had lost you ! I simply cannot explain what is happening for you. Do you have anything that could be making backups automatically ? Do you have windows restore running ? I see you are still using multiple overwrites...

Hex editors are best but they need an understanding of what you are doing. Otherwise Directory Snoop is quite good as they have a free trial version. I am a little restricted in what I can recommend as this is a free forum with free software, so suggesting commercial software wouldn’t be fair...

Yeah C:\.tmp or whatever drive letter you are erasing.

The .tmp file is created on the drive you are erasing. That is what Eraser uses to overwrite the drive. :D

I have heard of the font problem before but that was nothing that a restart didn’t fix. I can’t remember another user having this particular issue. As for Firefox forgetting everything I have that happen regularly on a computer which doesn’t actually have Eraser installed.

OK Thanks. :wink:

Although that is a good site you have linked to I prefer to get my copy of portable Eraser from Joel here. It will be more up to date and you know who has written it.

That’s great thank you. :wink:

Tell me about it !! :lol: OK thank you. :wink:

I personally only ever use the single pseudorandom pass. That method will defeat all software recovery tools and probably most hardware recovery methods too. Unless your threat model is a three letter agency then I would assume the single pseudorandom pass is as secure as you could want. If...

Hi I am using Eraser 5.8.7. Beta on XP Pro SP3. NTFS. I noticed in the change log it said this “ Further complicate forensics: Set MACE to invalid values (NTFS only)” On my C drive I wiped my free space, cluster tips and directory entries with the new beta and then looked at it with WinHex...