All this talk...

M

Mr Bob

New Member
Ive ben reading some of thwe posts here about Eraser. Ive been using Eraser a LONG time. It is what is SAYS it is. It was written by a 19 year old (at the time) student and freely given. Along with Best Crypt, it was one of the first. All others ("Evidence Eliminator", etc. etc) came later. And at a $price.
Look at the simplicity of Eraser. And the work one has to do to configure it to ones OWN system. You know - entering the files to Erase. This is more trustworthy than a program which "does it all automatically" with fancy bells and whistles without you having to educate yourself somewhat on the subject It was also the first (to my knowledge) to do a 35 pass overwrite. Gee, what else you want?
There is a certain class of people who LOVE to write programs and who believe should be free. Some of the best are in Europe (Russia, Finland, etc). I think the author of Eraser (Sami) falls into that category. And I think the one carrying his work on (Garrett) does too, and it is completely ok for him to ask for a $10 donation.
What Im trying to say here is Eraser is not only good - its a goddamed LEGEND.
Only YOU can decide if it works. I KNOW it does.
As to the swap file...what the hell is the big deal? Set it to a fixed size and ERASE it in DOS!!
GONE!
 
I share your sentiments about Eraser. It was the first utility of its kind I ever used, and its still the one I rely on and trust most.

quote:As to the swap file...what the hell is the big deal? Set it to a fixed size and ERASE it in DOS!!Setting the page file to a fixed size is not practical. For one thing, the only safe and reliable way to do it is to try to overestimate the largest size it would ever need to be--to avoid memory shortfalls. But does that make sense? In my case, each time I created an image of a partition that has a page file, Id have to waste several GB of space, just because I was using a fixed size.

Its also not convenient in the least--are you saying that every time I reboot, I should use a DOS floppy, then manually erase the page file? What if my Windows session is interrupted and I dont have a chance to erase it as you described? What if my power goes out or Windows crashes in the middle of a session?

Then, of course (a point I forgot initially), theres the fact that you cant readily erase the page file from DOS if its on an NTFS partition.

Hey, no problem, Im not yelling at you--just trying to make some points.
 
You pegged me Scott...these have only been my sentiments. I am not much knowlegable technically.
I dont use a large hard drive, I would be ashamed to tell you what size it is! Setting the swap to a fixed size for me therefore is not a problem, and yes, I do "oversize" it. And I manually erase it on shutdown to DOS. Most of what I do for security in general I do manually anyway. I go through the boring routine every session.

>What if my Windows session is interrupted and I dont have a chance to erase it as you described? What if my power goes out or Windows crashes in the middle of a session? What if I dont want to waste my time like that?<

Answer: I gess Im ****ed..for that time. Would hope that a freespace wipe would handle the leftovers.

Nothing wrong with encrypting the swap file, I guess. Have you heard of "Drive Cript"? This encrypts the WHOLE DAMN drive. Its a carry-on of ScramDisk another great program ("on-the-fly encryption) I have used a long time (and trust). But the idea of encrypting the whole drive seems to be a logical step and would eliminate all our concerns for "partiles leftover"! Gee, maybe we wouldnt need Eraser? :-)
Go easy on me Im a newbie!
 
DriveCrypt doesnt encrypt the "whole drive", but rather SecurStars other product, DriveCrypt Plus Pack, does that. And actually, I am a registered user of the former--I recently dumped it because its been very problematic for me.

Another reason you cant drop to DOS and erase the page file would be if you used NTFS... You wouldnt be able to access the partition at all (without dumping mondo cash on NTFSDOS Pro).

But actually, if youre running WinNT/2K/XP, enabling the "overwrite on shut down" option is almost certainly adequate protection.
 
Thanks for the data Scott. Im curious why the basic Drive Crypt was problematic to you. And do you now use the Plus version?
And had you ever used Scamdisk? What do you think of "on the fly" encryption?
I didnt know about that swap file option on XP, thats cool.
 
DriveCrypt (several versions of it) caused blue-screen crashes, as well as lock-ups, on my Windows XP system. I dont run the Plus version now; I simply switched to BestCrypt.

Since I still (very much) use BestCrypt, you could say Im very fond of OTFE utilities. [^]

I did have a copy of Scramdisk NT, but then I upgraded to Windows XP, which Scramdisk was never made fully compatible with. (FYI, DriveCrypt is very heavily based on Scramdisk, and is authored by the same person).
 
Im an old guy. Using Win98SE (I just love DOS, grew up with it).
So I am using 512 MB of RAM and NO swapfile at all.
Problem resolved. D:
 
...until your system needs more than 512 MB of memory, at which point you have a whole new set of problems! [:)]
 
Yeh Scott, I was aware that Shaun was involved or co-authord Drivecrypt. Maybe it has to progress more as a beta to work out the bugs?
Interesting that you use Best Crypt. Never tried it. But it sure has been around. But good ol Scramdisk is still very much available! Wow that m,akes only TWO reliable progs. Amazing! Unless you know of another?
Im gonna try that no swap file idea. Naw...
 
Gusti Wrote:

<So I am using 512 MB of RAM and NO swapfile at all.
<Problem resolved. D:


Absolutely! If you have 512mb of RAM, you are not going to peg it. I run 768mb RAM with WinXP - NO SWAP FILE and multi-task to my hearts content! NO PROBLEMS. I have done this for over a year. Its the only way to go if you want true privacy protection. In fact, the performance is BETTER! When the virtual memory is accessing the drive it obviously slows things down. I agree with all those who say "get enough memory and shut the swap file OFF - its simply not needed.
 
quote:I agree with all those who say "get enough memory and shut the swap file OFF - its simply not needed.It depends how you use your system! Obviously you dont push yours like I do; I have seen memory use of over 1 GB.
 
After reading this thread the other day, I decided to try and shut off my Swap File with 256 MB of ram running Win98FE. After reboot it worked for a short time then Zone Alarm announced it was shutting down. Then everything started locking up. I had to reboot to safe mode and reset my permanent swap file and reboot again. Go figure, eh?

Yes, the eh means Im Canadian.

Brian [:0]
 
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