Does It Erase MFT Entries Or Not?

[Deep Loner]

I'm confused whether Eraser actually clears unused entries from the Master File Table or not.

This is taken from the website's FAQ:

Erasing Unused Disk Space. What does that do?
Eraser will clean the unused parts of your disk. This will remove traces of any deleted data on the drive.
It will not remove deleted file entries these remail as 'ghosts' in the MFT/FAT.

Yet this is the dialog box for erasing options:


Also, the help file says:

If you select "Free Disk Space", all available, or free, disk space will be overwritten. On Windows NT and 2000, the unused space on the Master File Table records will be cleared as well.

Please clarify whether or not Eraser actually clears entries from the master file table, and precisely what the option in the dialog box is for.

 

[garrett01]

It will clear data from the MFT but old file entries remain as 'ghosts' i.e no data can be recovered.

Garrett

 

[Deep Loner]

Thank you for your reply, although I am still a little bit confused.

Are you saying that files wiped using Eraser get their MFT entries cleared, but the entries for files already deleted by other means remain? Or is the data that gets cleared referring to "resident" MFT files? I still don't understand precisely what gets erased and what remains.

Thank you for your help.