System: XP(SP3), 120GB hard-drive (112GB usable). On 22Dec2015 downloaded and installed latest Eraser build (after some difficulty) and ran with default settings to erase free-space. After about 3 hours running program seemed to be hung-up with about 3/4 done on progress bar; I let the program continue to run overnight. The result is that all free-space is now shown as fragmented. I had about 75GB(?) of free space before running Eraser and now I have about 800MB free space with the majority of files showing as fragmented. In response, I ran 3 other defrag programs but they all report too little free space necessary to run. Now what do I do?
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Erased free space - Majority of drive now showing as fragmented
- Thread starter DelG
- Start date
I managed to solve the problem. Here's an overview of steps:
Several years ago I used the Eraser program with success and without problems. Recently I installed the latest version with disastrous results. I have Windows XP with a 112GB hard-drive and 90GB free space. After running the program with the default settings to erase all free space, I was left with only about 800MB of free space. I visited Eraser's forum and saw that someone else had experienced a similar problem and a solution was posted to delete the temp folder that Eraser creates during its operation which accounted for the missing free space.
Well, my experience is that it's not as simple as normal file/folder delete operations usually are - I found that a 90GB file does not easily delete. Thankfully, I had installed a few years ago the free Comodo System Utilities that includes a Force Delete option which was able to delete the Eraser temp folder - it has a progress bar that afforded visual confirmation that something was actually happening [unlike other programs including Windows's own delete file function] and it also let me chart how long the process took to delete the 90GB file which was about 30 hours!
FYI - the Eraser temp folder was C:\dD]ni87C3+1fkj{uN[ ; a naming convention which looks similar to many Windows system folders and does not necessarily offer any clues as to the contents and its only when you try to see the properties of the folder that it becomes apparent that it must be the Eraser temp folder as the included files counter and files size continues to climb and climb and climb as it calculates what in the end was 90GB!
...using the Comodo utilities program, it took about 3 hours of running before any % progress registered in the progress bar. - the next 27 hours to completion was a leap of faith on my part or, in reality, a prayer that it was actually doing something and had any hope that it might to work! In total, I spent a total of about 52 hours on this entire process to delete the Eraser temp folder which included trying to run other programs to no avail before I finally luckily settled on Comodo System Utilities.
As for Eraser, I deduce that as it is securely erasing all the free-space on a drive, it leaves behind a marker at each free address block [thus rendering each block as occupied vs. free] perhaps to prevent any other program of writing files to that address block until Eraser completes its operation. However, it seems that my particular installation of Eraser failed to release all those occupied blocks when it finished it's 'wipe all free-space' operation effectively rendering occupied all those blocks which were in reality free space; further, the XP system reported all those occupied files as fragmented [as did 3 other defrag programs I tried]. Thus, defrag programs are of no help with this problem created by the failed Eraser operation [in my case 90GB of space reported as fragmented], especially since defragging does not include delete [wipe] operations and more, most if not all, defrag programs require a certain amount of free-space in order to run (ex. Windows XP requires 15% of hard-drive total to be free).
Needless to say, I will never again attempt to use Eraser.
P.S. - I also found a Microsoft XP article on how to permanently delete files using the Command-line prompt but I could not get it to work after entering a test folder on my desktop. The article explains how to delete a file or folder using the Run Cmd prompt line. I just tried to post the link in this post but the system would not allow it per this error msg: "Your content can not be submitted. This is likely because your content is spam-like or contains inappropriate elements. Please change your content or try again later. If you still have problems, please contact an administrator."
Several years ago I used the Eraser program with success and without problems. Recently I installed the latest version with disastrous results. I have Windows XP with a 112GB hard-drive and 90GB free space. After running the program with the default settings to erase all free space, I was left with only about 800MB of free space. I visited Eraser's forum and saw that someone else had experienced a similar problem and a solution was posted to delete the temp folder that Eraser creates during its operation which accounted for the missing free space.
Well, my experience is that it's not as simple as normal file/folder delete operations usually are - I found that a 90GB file does not easily delete. Thankfully, I had installed a few years ago the free Comodo System Utilities that includes a Force Delete option which was able to delete the Eraser temp folder - it has a progress bar that afforded visual confirmation that something was actually happening [unlike other programs including Windows's own delete file function] and it also let me chart how long the process took to delete the 90GB file which was about 30 hours!
FYI - the Eraser temp folder was C:\dD]ni87C3+1fkj{uN[ ; a naming convention which looks similar to many Windows system folders and does not necessarily offer any clues as to the contents and its only when you try to see the properties of the folder that it becomes apparent that it must be the Eraser temp folder as the included files counter and files size continues to climb and climb and climb as it calculates what in the end was 90GB!
...using the Comodo utilities program, it took about 3 hours of running before any % progress registered in the progress bar. - the next 27 hours to completion was a leap of faith on my part or, in reality, a prayer that it was actually doing something and had any hope that it might to work! In total, I spent a total of about 52 hours on this entire process to delete the Eraser temp folder which included trying to run other programs to no avail before I finally luckily settled on Comodo System Utilities.
As for Eraser, I deduce that as it is securely erasing all the free-space on a drive, it leaves behind a marker at each free address block [thus rendering each block as occupied vs. free] perhaps to prevent any other program of writing files to that address block until Eraser completes its operation. However, it seems that my particular installation of Eraser failed to release all those occupied blocks when it finished it's 'wipe all free-space' operation effectively rendering occupied all those blocks which were in reality free space; further, the XP system reported all those occupied files as fragmented [as did 3 other defrag programs I tried]. Thus, defrag programs are of no help with this problem created by the failed Eraser operation [in my case 90GB of space reported as fragmented], especially since defragging does not include delete [wipe] operations and more, most if not all, defrag programs require a certain amount of free-space in order to run (ex. Windows XP requires 15% of hard-drive total to be free).
Needless to say, I will never again attempt to use Eraser.
P.S. - I also found a Microsoft XP article on how to permanently delete files using the Command-line prompt but I could not get it to work after entering a test folder on my desktop. The article explains how to delete a file or folder using the Run Cmd prompt line. I just tried to post the link in this post but the system would not allow it per this error msg: "Your content can not be submitted. This is likely because your content is spam-like or contains inappropriate elements. Please change your content or try again later. If you still have problems, please contact an administrator."
Last edited:
I managed to solve the problem. Here's an overview of steps:
Several years ago I used the Eraser program with success and without problems. Recently I installed the latest version with disastrous results. I have Windows XP with a 112GB hard-drive and 90GB free space. After running the program with the default settings to erase all free space, I was left with only about 800MB of free space. I visited Eraser's forum and saw that someone else had experienced a similar problem and a solution was posted to delete the temp folder that Eraser creates during its operation which accounted for the missing free space.
Well, my experience is that it's not as simple as normal file/folder delete operations usually are - I found that a 90GB file does not easily delete. Thankfully, I had installed a few years ago the free Comodo System Utilities that includes a Force Delete option which was able to delete the Eraser temp folder - it has a progress bar that afforded visual confirmation that something was actually happening [unlike other programs including Windows's own delete file function] and it also let me chart how long the process took to delete the 90GB file which was about 30 hours!
FYI - the Eraser temp folder was C:\dD]ni87C3+1fkj{uN[ ; a naming convention which looks similar to many Windows system folders and does not necessarily offer any clues as to the contents and its only when you try to see the properties of the folder that it becomes apparent that it must be the Eraser temp folder as the included files counter and files size continues to climb and climb and climb as it calculates what in the end was 90GB!
...using the Comodo utilities program, it took about 3 hours of running before any % progress registered in the progress bar. - the next 27 hours to completion was a leap of faith on my part or, in reality, a prayer that it was actually doing something and had any hope that it might to work! In total, I spent a total of about 52 hours on this entire process to delete the Eraser temp folder which included trying to run other programs to no avail before I finally luckily settled on Comodo System Utilities.
As for Eraser, I deduce that as it is securely erasing all the free-space on a drive, it leaves behind a marker at each free address block [thus rendering each block as occupied vs. free] perhaps to prevent any other program of writing files to that address block until Eraser completes its operation. However, it seems that my particular installation of Eraser failed to release all those occupied blocks when it finished it's 'wipe all free-space' operation effectively rendering occupied all those blocks which were in reality free space; further, the XP system reported all those occupied files as fragmented [as did 3 other defrag programs I tried]. Thus, defrag programs are of no help with this problem created by the failed Eraser operation [in my case 90GB of space reported as fragmented], especially since defragging does not include delete [wipe] operations and more, most if not all, defrag programs require a certain amount of free-space in order to run (ex. Windows XP requires 15% of hard-drive total to be free).
Needless to say, I will never again attempt to use Eraser.
P.S. - I also found a Microsoft XP article on how to permanently delete files using the Command-line prompt but I could not get it to work after entering a test folder on my desktop. The article explains how to delete a file or folder using the Run Cmd prompt line. I just tried to post the link in this post but the system would not allow it per this error msg: "Your content can not be submitted. This is likely because your content is spam-like or contains inappropriate elements. Please change your content or try again later. If you still have problems, please contact an administrator."
Thanks for sharing. I went to C:\ and found a similarly named directory. It contained several pages of similarly named files, all 228MB in size. I simply deleted the whole directory (and after the system said that it was too much data for the Recycle Bin) and they were gone in less than a minute and the drive is again reporting ~250GB free. I'm going to dig a little deeper to be sure all the programs I left on the machine are working OK. Then I breathe a lot easier.