Can not erase cluster tips

[tophercar]

I ran Eraser yesterday and of course it took all day long, I guess that is what I get for having a 640 gig harddrive. Any way when I got to my computer today it had stated that it logged that is was finished with errors. Most of those errors were that It could not erase cluster tips. How do I set the program, I already checked the erase cluster tips. Are there permissions on my computer that I need to adjust?

 

[DavidHB]

Probably not. Assuming that you were erasing the C: drive, you encountered the issue that Windows protects literally thousands of system files in a way that gives the user (even with administrative privileges) no access whatever. This is achieved by having a hidden and inaccessible system user account (used only by Windows itself) which owns the protected files.

The fact that the files are so fiercely protected also means that in the great majority of cases their cluster tips cannot contain sensitive user data, and only a rather sophisticated opponent could even begin to access that data, even if it is present. So the limitation on Eraser is unlikely to be the biggest security hole in your (or my) system. But it does add to the case for keeping sensitive user data on a non-system drive or partition.

David