Eraser fails to erase unused space

R

rat

New Member
Using Win XP SP2 with Eraser 5.84. It works well on single files but when I try to erase unused space il fails after a few minutes or some hours. Here two samples from the log:
4/10/07 12.40.16: Failed to erase unused space on C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\Policies\x86_policy.8.0.Microsoft.VC80.MFC_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_x-ww_0f75c32e\8.0.50727.762.policy (Protected File).
4/10/07 12.40.16: Failed to erase unused space on C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\Policies\x86_policy.8.0.Microsoft.VC80.OpenMP_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_x-ww_7d81c9f9\8.0.50727.42.cat (Protected File).
4/10/07 12.40.16: Failed to erase unused space on C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\Policies\x86_policy.8.0.Microsoft.VC80.OpenMP_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_x-ww_7d81c9f9\8.0.50727.42.policy (Protected File).

And:
7.57.40: Scheduler (5.84) starting.
12/10/07 8.45.01: Running task (F:\).
12/10/07 9.52.22: Possible failure running task (F:\).
12/10/07 9.52.22: Failed to erase unused space on F:\DOWNLOADS\Clamori\Clamori sfusi\?boinkboink....wav.
12/10/07 9.52.22: Failed to erase unused space on F:\Emule Download\Download\Wynton.Marsalis.&.Arturo.Sandoval.-.[Los.Elefantes].??.(MP3).rar.
12/10/07 9.52.22: Failed to erase unused space on F:\RandomSounds\Clamori sfusi\?boinkboink....wav.
12/10/07 9.57.25: Scheduler quitting.

I tried to run Eraser in safe mode: it seemed to work but after 10 hours the progress indicator was way behind the halfway mark - so I abandoned.
Regards
 
rat said:
Using Win XP SP2 with Eraser 5.84. It works well on single files but when I try to erase unused space il fails after a few minutes or some hours.

I tried to run Eraser in safe mode: it seemed to work but after 10 hours the progress indicator was way behind the halfway mark - so I abandoned.
Regards[/b]
Click to expand...

I had the same problem with 5.84. Following advice on another thread I removed it and reinstalled 5.7, rebooted in Safe mode and ran it on Unused Disc Space and it worked fine. Took about 12 hours with single pass PRNG to do cluster tips, free space and directory entries but it completed. This was on an XP Pro system.

Regards,

JoeB
 
Took about 12 hours with single pass PRNG to do cluster tips, free space and directory entries but it completed.
Click to expand...

:shock: 12 Hours !!! You must have a massive hard drive ! :lol:
 
Overwriter said:
Took about 12 hours with single pass PRNG to do cluster tips, free space and directory entries but it completed.
Click to expand...

:shock: 12 Hours !!! You must have a massive hard drive ! :lol:
Click to expand...

Nope, only 149gb with 61gb unused space. It does need defragging but I wanted to to the erasing prior to defrag.

Regards,

JoeB
 
That does seem like an awfully long time for a 160GB drive. Could there be something wrong with it ?

Are you sure you used a single pass random wipe ?
 
Overwriter said:
That does seem like an awfully long time for a 160GB drive. Could there be something wrong with it ?

Are you sure you used a single pass random wipe ?
Click to expand...

That's what it shows under Preferences, the Unused Disc Space tab as being highlighted, and also what I had set under the other tab. As far as I know there's nothing wrong with the drive (SATA, NTFS), and it seems to work pretty fast otherwise. My converting and burning with CxD also works as I would expect (about 1 hour or so to convert and burn a two hour movie). Other specs are 2gb ram and Pentium 4 2.66ghz processor.

JB
 
I have some SATA drives, they seem quicker when erasing.

I wonder what’s going on particularly as you were in safe mode so there shouldn’t be anything unnecessary running in the background.

I wiped two of my 500GB SATA WD drives a while back and (I am guessing here, poor memory, mine not the computers !) I think it took 4 – 5 hours each ! :shock:
 
Overwriter said:
I have some SATA drives, they seem quicker when erasing.

I wonder what’s going on particularly as you were in safe mode so there shouldn’t be anything unnecessary running in the background.

I wiped two of my 500GB SATA WD drives a while back and (I am guessing here, poor memory, mine not the computers !) I think it took 4 – 5 hours each ! :shock:
Click to expand...

I don't know what's going on. I started it about midnight and for the first 20 minutes that I was able to see the interface it was analysing the drive. I don't know how long that went on because I went to bed. The next morning at about 9:00 it was overwriding unused space and had almost 2 hours to go. I let it run and around 11:00 it had finished doing that and was removing directory entries, which didn't take long at all. I know that before it went into erasing Unused Disc Space it would have done the cluster tips.

Another thing is that there was a very lengthy log of files it failed to erase. A great many of them were in the same path so I checked it out with Windows Explorer. When I tried to open the various folders I got a Windows popup telling me it couldn't access the folder because the path was too long, and it was definitely a long path with a couple of the parent folders having a very long folder name. When I moved the folders further up the tree I was able to open the folders with Explorer. So perhaps a lot of time was spent by Eraser on these files - there were 175 of them - and perhaps Eraser thought it was unused space because Windows Explorer couldn't access them. They weren't unused disc space, however, because the files still exist - they are various extra graphic elements like picture frames, brushes, etc. used by my graphics programs that I just haven't installed yet.

There were also about 168 Prefetch items that failed and showed up in the failed log. There were 170 dlls from Syestm 32 that failed. And there were 125 files that start with the following path that failed:

C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\Manifests\x86_Microsoft.

All of those have the words (Protected File) at the end of the line in the log.

Other than that, there was a hodgepodge of files but not all that many. The above made up by far the majority of failed erases.

Here's the time stats from the log - you'll notice it took about 11 hours and 40 minutes:

Statistics:

Erased area = 64302 MB

Cluster tips = 622554 kB

Data written = 64302 MB

Write time = 41021.15 s

Write speed = 1605 kB/s

Does the above info help at all and, if so, what does it tell you?

JB
 
Things are always slower with Safe Mode. I get 45 MB/s at the end of my 320GB SATA (imagine wat it's like at the front of the disk, lol), but in Safe Mode I reckon it's no more than 10mb/s at the start.

Joel
 
Hi JB

Well Joel says it is because you were running in safe mode, would you try to run normal just to see if it is quicker ? If you need to you can always cancel half way through.


Hi Joel.

I would have thought the SATA drivers would be loaded even in safe mode or is that not the problem ?

Also I thought that things “should” be quicker in safe mode as there are fewer things running. Do you know why this is not the case ?

Thanks.
 
It's not with SATA, its with the IDE channel. Windows stics to PIO in Safe Mode.

Joel
 
Hi Joel.

It's not with SATA, its with the IDE channel. Windows stics to PIO in Safe Mode.
Click to expand...

I didn’t know that, I sometimes run certain things in safe mode because I always thought that they would be quicker ! Oops ! Thanks.



Hi JB

There you go, Joel says it’s because you were in safe mode, please give it a try in normal mode and let us know how you got on.

Thanks.
 
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