Empty gibberish folder created after erasing folders

M

minevra

New Member
Hi, I'm new to this software.

I recently used it to wipe a HD that used to be the primary HD of a PC. It was faulty but still functional. Because we extended the warranty of the PC, Dell came and replace the HD. But, they wanted to take the old HD back and gave us 14 days grace period. So, I need to erase the data inside. The HD has 2 partition. I was trying to delete the 2 partition backup partition first. I first used the 'Erase unused space' option. The result is 'Completed with error'. I check the log and it said the System Restore folder is denied access.

After that I tried deleting the folders and files in the partition. Everything was ok except 2 folders. The software created empty folder with gibberish name after the erase process. The error message is 'Access to G:\\(gibberish folder) denied. I tried to erase that folder and a new gibberish folder appear. I tried several times and the same thing happen. What should I do with these folders?

The first folder that caused this, I deleted in one go. The second folder this occurrence happen to is an empty folder. It was a large folder, but, because I afraid that it will take a long time to delete such a folder, and I cannot stop halfway, I deleted the folders and subfolders inside it one by one first.

I tried using normal delete to one of these folder and I was able to. It went into Recycle Bin.

So, what can I do with these folders? Is using normal delete safe? If I use Erase, it will just create a new gibberish folder.

This HD is connected to my notebook using a USB device called 'USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE cable'.
 
This is a known problem with Eraser 6.0.7. (the current stable release). The issue has been to persuade Windows to allow Eraser to keep working when disk space is low; the drive needs to be completely full in order that all free space is overwritten. My testing of development builds indicates that the problem will be fixed in the next release.

In the meantime, just delete the Eraser temporary files/folders which are left behind in these circumstances, and empty (do not erase) the Recycle Bin if some or all the files go there. Obviously, It's a good idea not to have any sensitive files in the Bin alongside the Eraser files. Also, if you delete the whole folder in one go, it may be too large to go into the Recycle Bin, which would be good news in this instance.

Having to follow this procedure is irritating, but not a problem in itself. What may be more of an issue is that when the program stops prematurely, the unused entries in the MFT are not overwritten, so file names can be recovered even if the file content cannot. If this is a real issue for you, I would suggest (with the usual health warnings about using beta software) that you try a development build, to see if that works.

I suggest you switch off System Restore on all but your system (C:) drive. It serves virtually no purpose on a non-system drive, and clogs up the drive with files that Windows makes inaccessible. The contents of the folder will then be (mostly) deleted, but you'd have to connect the drive to a non-Windows system to get rid of the folder itself.

David
 
DavidHB said:
I suggest you switch off System Restore on all but your system (C:) drive. It serves virtually no purpose on a non-system drive, and clogs up the drive with files that Windows makes inaccessible. The contents of the folder will then be (mostly) deleted, but you'd have to connect the drive to a non-Windows system to get rid of the folder itself.
Click to expand...
Actually System Restore on a non-system drive can be used for volume shadow copies, or retrieving old versions of deleted files. Something like a time machine, for your documents.
 
Joel said:
Actually System Restore on a non-system drive can be used for volume shadow copies, or retrieving old versions of deleted files. Something like a time machine, for your documents.
Click to expand...
In my book, that is what a decent backup program is for. The trouble with System Restore is that it is pretty much all or nothing; you can't choose which bits to restore; the price of recovering that document may then be messing up all sorts of other things. For me, the only real use of System Restore is to reverse a system change you made very recently.

David
 
Actually you can selectively recover files in Vista and later. It's the Previous Versions tab in your folder/file properties.
 
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