Eraser is not secure? I've tested it - here the results

soho

New Member
Hello,

first my configuration.

WinXP Pro SP2
Eraser 5.82
Ontrack EasyRecovery 6.10
Toshiba 1 GB USB-Stick
Some Pictures (jpeg)

What i did:

I copied the pictures to the usb-stick and then i deleted (did NOT put them into garbage) them.
After that i've chosen 'wipe free space' with the three-times method with all the options marked (cannot remember the exact name of them, i am currently not on windows).

It took a long time (15 minutes or so), and the erasing finished without any error, also the summary was shown.


Next Step:

I started Ontrack EasyRecovery 6.10 and select Raw-Recovery-Modus.

It started scanning and after 2 Minutes it finishes showing me many files to select.

I selected the jpegs and also some pdf files which i must have deleted a long time ago.

I started the recovery-process and it finishes, that means it copied the files to a destination-dir.



Surprisingly:

I was wondering myself, i could not belive it. I could view these pictures i deleted before and i could also view the pdf-files although i did 'wipe free space' with three-time wiping and alternate data streams and the other options i don't remember.

So to the programmer: How can this be that i can recover files after using eraser?

I felt very secure by using this program a long time now, but now i am a bit afraid.

And in relation to the results of my test, it is very deceptive that this program has some wiping-features that are less secure than the three-times-wipe.

I am out of ideas.
 
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