A
Anonymous
Guest
This section from the faq seems to be gibberish:
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I want to perform a Freespace Erase on my hard drive and I also want to defragment it, which should I do first?
Do it in this order:
Step 1. FreeSpace Erase
Step 2. Defragment
If you defragment a drive first and then do a freespace erase after, you may find traces of an erased file because the original file is potentially moved all over the disk. The current copy is erased but a forensic scan of the drive may locate parts of the file where it was being moved around during the defragmentation.
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#1: If I do a freespace erase, that shouldn't be wiping any files at all.
#2: If I do a freespace erase, it *will* erase any leftover traces of files that have been moved by the defragmenter, because they'll be free space afterward, not files.
#3: If I "find traces of an erased file", it can't actually have been erased in the first place.
#4: If I erase a file, defrag isn't going to move it about afterward, is it?
If you do it in the order recommended in the FAQ, the erase will wipe everything but your files; then the defrag will scatter stray copies of parts of those files all over your drive. This isn't an issue (after all, the original file is still right there for all to see) unless you later want to erase one of those files, in which case you'll need to do a freespace wipe later to ensure you got all the copies. OTOH, if you do the defrag first, that'll spray copies of parts of the files all over; then when you do the freespace wipe second, they'll all be wiped, leaving you with a nice clean disk with just your files on it.
cheers,
DaveK
-------------snip-------------
I want to perform a Freespace Erase on my hard drive and I also want to defragment it, which should I do first?
Do it in this order:
Step 1. FreeSpace Erase
Step 2. Defragment
If you defragment a drive first and then do a freespace erase after, you may find traces of an erased file because the original file is potentially moved all over the disk. The current copy is erased but a forensic scan of the drive may locate parts of the file where it was being moved around during the defragmentation.
-------------snip-------------
#1: If I do a freespace erase, that shouldn't be wiping any files at all.
#2: If I do a freespace erase, it *will* erase any leftover traces of files that have been moved by the defragmenter, because they'll be free space afterward, not files.
#3: If I "find traces of an erased file", it can't actually have been erased in the first place.
#4: If I erase a file, defrag isn't going to move it about afterward, is it?
If you do it in the order recommended in the FAQ, the erase will wipe everything but your files; then the defrag will scatter stray copies of parts of those files all over your drive. This isn't an issue (after all, the original file is still right there for all to see) unless you later want to erase one of those files, in which case you'll need to do a freespace wipe later to ensure you got all the copies. OTOH, if you do the defrag first, that'll spray copies of parts of the files all over; then when you do the freespace wipe second, they'll all be wiped, leaving you with a nice clean disk with just your files on it.
cheers,
DaveK