access denied

J

jaeedy

New Member
hello. I am new here and just downloaded eraser today. So far I really like it, but when I tried to erase my spare drive it won't erase over \system Volume Information. it says access is denied. is there a way to get it to completely wipe this drive?

Thank in advance for any help!

Julie
 
jaeedy said:
Is there a way to get it to completely wipe this drive?
Click to expand...
Yes. Quick format it to delete all the files (including the ones Windows insists on locking), then erase the free space. The fact that you have (presumably) erased most of the files already is an additional security bonus.

Future versions of Eraser will have a capability to erase a whole disk or partition in one go (though obviously not the system drive from which the OS and Eraser itself are running!).

David
 
thanks for the information it helped. I will format the drive and then do another erase.

Thank you!! :mrgreen:

Julie
 
Alternatively, you can just clear all system restore points and do an unused space erase. That should empty most of what is in the system volume information folder. To the best of my knowledge that folder only stores system restore points (but don't take my word as gospel, I don't have proof offhand, just a vague recollection from something I read before)
 
This isn't something I can really clear the restore points. It's an hard drive out of an old computer. I use it as an external drive. It's about 40gbs. I tried the format idea but it didn't work. It only takes about 5 seconds for the erase to complete. That seems awfully fast. So I ran a recovery program and found lots and lots of left over stuff. Old game files and all sorts. I am not so sure the erase even works. Any other ideas?
 
Which OS are you using, and which version of Eraser, please? And which type of Eraser task were you trying to run: erasing files/folders or erasing free space? Did the format process itself work? On its own, it would have left file residues as you describe.

David
 
DavidHB said:
Which OS are you using, and which version of Eraser, please? And which type of Eraser task were you trying to run: erasing files/folders or erasing free space? Did the format process itself work? On its own, it would have left file residues as you describe.

David
Click to expand...

I am using windows 7 pro and the latest version of eraser. I right clicked the the drive and just told it to erase. The setting for the program are the default. Is there another way to do it?
 
Sorry but, by the 'latest version', do you mean the current stable release (6.0.7), and not a development build? I shall assume that you do.

To erase free space, under Windows 7, you will normally need to run Eraser as administrator. Instructions for doing this are in the 'Getting to know Eraser' FAQ post.

Before you do this, start the Eraser program, and make sure that you are looking at the Schedule. It may well be that, in the Schedule, there are one or more entries relating to the task you tried to run; it/they could be marked as 'completed with errors'. If so, right-click on one of these entries, select 'View Task Log', and look at the error message. If it refers to the need to run as administrator, or if there is no log entry or error message, run the program as administrator as previously indicated, and try the erase again. If there is a different error message, please could you say what it is.

David
 
DavidHB said:
Sorry but, by the 'latest version', do you mean the current stable release (6.0.7), and not a development build? I shall assume that you do.

To erase free space, under Windows 7, you will normally need to run Eraser as administrator. Instructions for doing this are in the 'Getting to know Eraser' FAQ post.

Before you do this, start the Eraser program, and make sure that you are looking at the Schedule. It may well be that, in the Schedule, there are one or more entries relating to the task you tried to run; it/they could be marked as 'completed with errors'. If so, right-click on one of these entries, select 'View Task Log', and look at the error message. If it refers to the need to run as administrator, or if there is no log entry or error message, run the program as administrator as previously indicated, and try the erase again. If there is a different error message, please could you say what it is.

David
Click to expand...

I am using 6.0.7. It did says completed with errors but it didn't say anything about running it as an admin. The error referred to \system volume information and access to it was denied.
 
jaeedy said:
It did say completed with errors but it didn't say anything about running it as an admin. The error referred to \system volume information and access to it was denied.
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The error is, pretty much, expected; the only problem is that Eraser describes the normal (and unavoidable) locking of folders and files by Windows as errors; future versions will not do this.

To get rid of the contents of System Volume Information (the folder itself will be very hard to eradicate), do as Joel suggests; you get rid of the old restore points by turning off System Protection for that drive only (that's accessed from Control Panel|System|SystemRestore|<select your drive>|Configure then select the option to turn off System Restore and click the button to delete all restore points.

Now try running Eraser as administrator (details in FAQ, as I said). This time, create a task in the Eraser Schedule (again, details in the FAQ) to erase the free space on your drive. See if it runs for any length of time, and what errors it produces. If it still stops very quickly, try disabling the option to erase cluster tips, and run the task again.

David
 
Hello again!

I think I got it figured out. I search the FAQs and found a suggestion to exit out of the icon on the tray. I did that and then chose run as administrator. It seems to be working now. It finally has a status bar and is taking much longer to run. It has been running for about 5 minutes now. After it is done I am going to run my recovery program against it and see if it finds anything.

Thanks for all your help!

Julie
 
Ok.

It took about 30 minutes for it to complete and finally it completed with no errors. So I ran my recovery program against and it found exactly 911 files. All but one were recoverable. They appeared to be jibberish, but I am not sure. Any thoughts as to what those were?

Julie
 
jaeedy said:
It took about 30 minutes for it to complete and finally it completed with no errors.
Click to expand...
That would be pretty much OK on a reasonably modern machine, as you were only erasing 40GB and there was nothing on the drive to get in the way.

jaeedy said:
So I ran my recovery program against and it found exactly 911 files. All but one were recoverable. They appeared to be jibberish, but I am not sure. Any thoughts as to what those were?
Click to expand...
From your description, they are the files Eraser uses to wipe the free space. What it does is fill all the free space with files full of random data (thereby overwriting what was there before), and then delete those files; as they are only random data, they don't need to be erased. Your recovery program can recover them, but they are only rubbish, so there is no security concern in that. The important thing is that nothing you would recognise as personal data appears to be recoverable; it has all been overwritten.

David
 
I was having problems trying to erase the unused space on an external USB drive with Eraser v6.0.7.1893 under Windows 7 Pro. I kept getting the message that Eraser didn't have rights to access the drive. I tried everything including running Eraser as an Administrator (even though I am already one). I then read this post and became enlightened. Windows 7 hides the Eraser icon on the right hand side of the task bar unless you click on the "Show hidden icons" arrow, click on "Customize", and set Eraser to show icon and notifications. So I wasn't aware that Eraser was already running as an application which was why running it from the Desktop icon as an administrator didn't work. I exited Eraser from the icon and then ran it again as an administrator. This time Eraser started the process of erasing the unused space on the drive. I also now have the Eraser icon permanently on show on the task bar. I hope other people frustrated by the over the top security of Windows 7 pick this up.
 
When you have an account with administrator status in Vista or Windows 7, you are not running programs as administrator by default, as you were in XP. You have to run the program explicitly as administrator to use it with administrator privileges. Even then, there are some files Windows will just not allow you, or any other user, to access. This makes life a lot harder for programs like Eraser, and was a major factor in the decision to re-write the program from scratch as Eraser 6.

In my experience, the Eraser icon usually shows up in the system tray. If it doesn't, you can right-click on the background of the tray and select 'Customize notification icons' to select the behaviour of the Eraser icon, which is a variant of what you did.

I agree that it can be confusing to the new user to have to close the running instance of Eraser before running it as administrator. That is why I included the point in the FAQ post on Getting to know Eraser 6'. Hopefully the issue will be resolved when the Eraser core runs as a service rather than as a process; that is a planned change I hope to see in Version 6.2.

I also fully agree with you about the Windows Security model. Sadly, we have to live with it.

David
 
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