Files recovered after running eraser portable

[caseys_32]

First post here, so be gentle if i'm missing something obvious.

I run a non-profit computer refurbishing company and was looking for a way to build disk sanitization into our existing unattended Windows XP installation. Currently, we are using DBAN then running a CD based XP install.

To make things simpler for my volunteers and assure every disk gets wiped I wanted to automate the wiping process, by combining it with our XP install. A single pass is sufficient for what we are doing, so I figured the easiest solution would be to run a free space wipe on the disk after install. I do not wish to install the wiping software onto each computer, so I downloaded the 5.8.8 portable and have it sitting on our server. After XP is installed a script kicks off to install a bundle of freeware and then run eraserl.exe off the server:

\\server\programs\Eraser\eraserl -disk c:\ -method Random 1 -results

After eraserl.exe completes I get a window confirming completion and a few errors of files it could not access. These are installation files that were just run. To check the wipe I ran a recovery tool called GetDataBack NTFS and was sill able to recover hundreds of files from the previous owner of the computer. When I run this tool after a DBAN single pass and an install of Windows XP I'm not able to find anything. Please let me know if I am doing something wrong or Eraser for an unintended purpose?

 

[DavidHB]

I haven't got the Portable Eraser help file to hand, but the standard Eraser 5 help file explicitly says that you should not erase files over the network; indeed I have explained just this in another of today's threads. It is distinctly possible that, over the network (that is, working through protocols rather than directly with the system), Eraser is not able to access the target sectors.

DBAN is, I believe, much the best tool for your application, which is why it was built into Eraser 5. I hope it will soon find its way back into Eraser 6, though these days the floppy disk version is of declining usefulness, so we shall need the version which creates an .iso file.

This is not the answer you wanted, but I hope that it explains things.

David

 

[caseys_32]

I've changed the script to first copy the portable app to the local drive then start the free space wipe and initial results look good. Will continue to test and post back any issues. Thanks for the help!

 

[DavidHB]

Smart solution! I hope it continues to work. How do you manage the drive addressing so that Eraser knows it's working on a local drive and isn't accessing the network protocols? Or does it just know where the sectors are and address them anyway?

David

 

[Joel]

After XP is installed a script kicks off to install a bundle of freeware and then run eraserl.exe off the server:

\\server\programs\Eraser\eraserl -disk c:\ -method Random 1 -results

After eraserl.exe completes I get a window confirming completion and a few errors of files it could not access.

I believe there may be other errors in the log which you did not notice. The erase shouldn't fail silently.

I haven't got the Portable Eraser help file to hand, but the standard Eraser 5 help file explicitly says that you should not erase files over the network; indeed I have explained just this in another of today's threads. It is distinctly possible that, over the network (that is, working through protocols rather than directly with the system), Eraser is not able to access the target sectors.

The program, while on the server, is loaded into the local memory so this shouldn't be an issue...

DBAN is, I believe, much the best tool for your application, which is why it was built into Eraser 5. I hope it will soon find its way back into Eraser 6, though these days the floppy disk version is of declining usefulness, so we shall need the version which creates an .iso file.

DBAN has always been a separate project, and DBAN's currently unmaintained so... I'm not sure about the feasibility of that.

HTH,
Joel