Erasing free & slack space BEFORE starting XP?

[Duckman]

Can this be done? Calling Eraser to clean the free space & file slacks (but not the MFT) before booting into the XP GUI on an NTFS drive? So that Eraser can e.g. wipe the slack of files that won't be accessible under the GUI. There are programs that do exactly that to avoid "locked" files; for example, the OODefrag optimizer can start before XP, in console mode, to unfragment files that can't be accessed when XP is in the GUI mode.

If it can be done with Eraser (or is there another wiping tool that can do it?), then how? Could it be done from the recovery console? Or by creating a bootable CD or floppy that can access NTFS drives and has Eraser on it? (Maybe someone has such images or "recipes" for making them? ) And if it can be done, should Eraserd or Eraserl be used?

 

[Robbie]

I don't know about that, but I sometimes do a file slack wipe in Safe Mode, logged in as Administrator. I find that only 300 or so files are locked, rather than a few thousand when ran in normal mode. I still do a free space wipe in normal mode though, as I find it takes too long in Safe Mode.

 

[Carver]

I still do a free space wipe in normal mode though, as I find it takes too long in Safe Mode.

I agree, I did it once. I don't think it needs to be done that often, maybe every 6 months. I even posted a thread about it, never did get a reply.