Cleaning Directory Filenames

J

JohnJr

New Member
I've noticed that if I look at the directory listings on my hard drive with a program like Clean Disk Security (which will show, supposedly, the names of files that have been deleted), after I've run Eraser on this drive to clean free space and remove directory entries, Clean Disk Security will show file names of deleted files but most of the names are 'random' characters and the file dates are mostly all '12-31-1979'.

Is this the way that Eraser works to 'remove' directory entries (file names), by changing the file names to 'random' characters and the file dates to '12-31-1979', or am I seeing something else (and if so, any ideas as to what I'm seeing)?

John
 
Yes, when erasing files, their names will be replaced with random characters. When you erase unused disk space, their names will either be zeroed (FAT) or overwritten with random characters (NTFS).
 
My drives are set up as FAT32. It appears that when I erase unused disk space that the names are being overwritten with random characters, the same as if I was using NTFS. Is that possible?
 
Also, why does it do these two different things for the different file systems?

Is it supposedly impossible to write "random" chars in FAT32?
 
Guessed said:
Is it supposedly impossible to write "random" chars in FAT32?
Click to expand...

you write any random or none random data in fat as many times as you want.
 
Guessed said:
Is it supposedly impossible to write "random" chars in FAT32?
Click to expand...

you write any random or none random data in fat as many times as you want.
 
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