Coincidence?

A

addy

New Member
I used the Eraser software for the fist time today on my laptop, I used the erase free space option. I noticed that while the erase procedure was taking place that my hard drive was making quite a lot of 'chugging' noises. Is this normal?

After the erase had finished all was well for about and hour and then the HD started to make a loud clicking noise. During the follow couple of hours the laptop froze a few times and I received the dreaded blue screen. Now the computer won't even start, all I get is a black screen with 'operating system not found'. So I suppose the HD has died.

I can't believe that this has anything to do with the Eraser program and that it's just a coincidence, but I though I would post this anyway just in case anyone has experienced similar happenings. But at least I did regain some lost space from my now defunked drive! :)
 
Hi addy

I believe your hard drive was about to fail anyway and Eraser simply put it out of its misery.

Doing a full free space wipe puts stress on your hard drive for a short time so any problems with it will show at that time. Please don’t associate your drive failing with Eraser as I am sure if you had performed a defrag on that drive at that time instead of erasing you would have suffered the same outcome.

Don’t forget to physically destroy your now broken drive !
 
Hi Overwriter,

Thanks for your reply. No, I don't think that Eraser had anything to do with my HD failure, and when I receive my new drive I will certainly reinstall the program and try it again.

As Eraser puts stress on a HD is it safe to run it often? I'd hate to shorten the life of my drives.

Thanks again.
 
Hi addy


As Eraser puts stress on a HD is it safe to run it often? I'd hate to shorten the life of my drives.
Click to expand...

Yes it is safe to run Eraser on a healthy drive as often as you like.

When I said stress I mean as in normal usage. Any read or write activity particularly in a sustained manner will take out a defective drive. That is why I said a simple defrag may have taken out your old drive. A healthy drive can handle this although read/write heads of even the best quality drives have a limited life span. This should not concern you enough if you buy a good quality drive and change it every few years.

To give you excellent protection and limit the wear to your hard drive I suggest you select the single pass random wipe for all types of erasing. To be honest I have never heard of anyone recovering data that has had a single overwrite pass. Your situation may be different but I would think this would be sufficient.

Remember to always backup up your important data and even better encrypt it !
 
Hi Overwriter,

Thanks so much for your reply, I feel happier about it now. I will take your advice and use the single pass random wipe option, which should be good enough for my needs.

Thanks again!
 
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