Consequences of accidentally started disk-erase?

raab

raab

New Member
Hi,

I am a fairly technically advanced user, and have been using eraser 5 for quite a while. Still using 5.8.8 on my Windows 7 pc.

Today, I needed to do some work which involved erasing the unused disk-space on another computer. I seemed to remember discussions on eraser 5 and 6, but decided to go with the newer version - 'it can't be that different..'

After attempting to erase the unused disk-space 5-6 times without success, I started the eraser scheduler with administrative access and attempted again to erase the unused disk-space. Except I was getting so impatient with the failure to command the program to do what I wanted, that I accidentally right-clicked the c-drive and chose eraser->erase instead of 'erase unused disk space'. Needless to say, eraser started erasing imediately. I instantly panicked, clicked the task to see what it was doing, and apparently, it started erasing c:\windows\system32 at once. I terminated the eraser.exe process imediately in the task manager, and when I fired up eraser again, the scheduler did not seem to remember that task. The task had most likely run a total of 20-40 seconds before I managed to see what had happened and shut it down.

My question is: What potential consequences are there of this erase. Am I getting it wrong, and that it did not start erasing the entire c-drive, or should I be worried? The computer started up fine again, but I am of course worried that I might have taken out some system files in the system32 directory before I shut it down. Lacking any log-files - since eraser did not remember the task - I am left only with guessing.

As a sidenote, if I understand this right - and please correct me if I do not - I am baffled by the ability to simply right-click a drive (even the system drive), choose erase->erase, and simply have the program start churning on erasing the system disk (!). The user interface in eraser 6 is in my opinion terrible. I must concur 100% with the posters in other threads suggesting to keep the UI from eraser 5 and the 'engine' from eraser 6.

raab
 
The good news is that, if you stopped the erase very quickly, and Eraser only got as far as the System32 folder, there's a reasonable chance that not too much damage will have been done. Most of what is in there is protected by the OS, and I guess that, if you were not running Eraser as Administrator (and the signs are that you were not), Eraser will have been busy generating error messages rather than actually erasing. The plan for now is to continue using the machine to see if anything breaks. If it does, your options are:
  • use System Restore to go back to where you were, though in your case I'm not that confident that a Restore Point would give you all you need;
  • use the system file checker (sfc /scannow) at boot to check for and recover lost files.

Eraser 6 is very different from Eraser 5; in fact it's a complete rewrite. There is a whole FAQ topic on the architecture, so I won't repeat that here. I do recommend that you read the FAQ topic 'Getting to know Eraser 6', which has a number of hints for users of Eraser 5. In particular, it explains running Eraser as Administrator, which you need to do in Vista and Win 7 when you run a free space erase.

I entirely agree with you about the need for a confirmation dialog when context menu erasing. This has now been incorporated in the 6.1 beta builds, which unfortunately are still unavailable after the recent problems with Heidi's server.

David
 
Hi David,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Problem is, I am fairly sure I managed to get eraser elevated at that point. And only then chose the wrong option (disk-erase). I would of course be happy if your theory is correct, but I am concerned it may have erased something.

Would there be any log-file generated I could access to see the damage done?

raab
 
raab said:
Problem is, I am fairly sure I managed to get eraser elevated at that point. And only then chose the wrong option (disk-erase). I would of course be happy if your theory is correct, but I am concerned it may have erased something.
Click to expand...
In that case, I too would be concerned. I guess that the System File Checker (search on "sfc") is the way to go.

raab said:
Would there be any log-file generated I could access to see the damage done?
Click to expand...
You destroyed it when you exited Eraser, I fear. The logs for context menu erasing tasks only remain if there are errors. And, unfortunately, it is only an error log; it does not show which files have been erased. Even if it did, you'd be better off letting sfc do the job in any case.

David
 
Pardon me chiming in a little late.

I think if you cancelled it that quickly, it should be okay. Eraser scans the disk for files to erase and compiles the list before actually erasing anything. As the C drive has thousands of files, that part should take at least 5-10min to complete. Your computer should be fine...
 
Thanks, Joel. That's good to know for future reference.

David
 
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