free space wipe make unreadable ALL data on 2 hard-disk

C

ciropizza

New Member
hi!

please excluse me for my english, 'cause i'm italian.
I'm a bit desperate, 'cause after using eraser 5.84 "free space wipe" task, my hard disk stop functioning.
or, well.

i installed flawlessly eraser 5.84 on a XP SP2 pro machine, with a gigabyte nforce4 chipset motherboard, an Athlon AMD64, Ati Radeon x1300 and 1 Gb RAM.
I have installed two SATA HD: one maxtor and one Seagate barracuda 7200.10; on the first is running XP.

I set up eraser with all default function , that is, changing anything in the options; i started the auto-task to wipe free space on the whole drives.
then, i went to work.
eraser was the only program runnning on the computer

coming back home, i noticed that the icons in the taskbar were missing the right "images", i mean, they were displaying as files without known extension.
so i try to use tweakui to restore icons, but any program in control panel would start.

so, i decided to reboot.

after reboot, xp won't boot normally, but it didn't show any blue screen of death, neither a file system error.

i start system with bartPE and i see that all files where in their position; so i try to copy documents and all the other files i need on the second hard disk. copying wassmooth as usual.

so i reformatted C: recreating the partition. I reinstall XP and this process too was fine.

But, whe i try to access to all the other files i had on the second hard disk -my collection of mp3, divx, mail archives, documents, all i have backed up from the first HD-, well, allthese files were unopenable.
this is very strange, 'cause they were really occupying space, i can copy and delete them, but any of them will open, exe files gave me a "memory" error, any rar or zip is impossible to open....
whe i try to use deep scandisk options, at the 4th passage, scandisk hangs at 0%.

i could open TXT files, moreover, but all of them have the text filled with random characters... in an italian forum, one guy told me tht this txt issue happens when a program rewrite many times a file on itslef, the same eraser should do with files i'd like to erase!

i try also two programs to repair these files, but it's not possible to recover any of the 200 GB i lost, but that actually are on the HD, using eraser...

please let me know something, i don't know what can i do. i could recover the whole mp3 collection from my cds, but the documents and the mails...

thanks in advance,
Francesco
 
Hi ciropizza

I am sorry you have experienced this problem.

I am unsure what could have happened as you seem to have had a catastrophic disaster !

The only time this sort of thing happened with Eraser before was when the first and last 2KB option was used. Could that have been the case ?

Thanks.
 
well, thanks for the answer.
i don't know if this option was used, but i'm sure i didn't change any setting in "eraser" options. I didn't want to experience any problem so i left all settings as i found them on install.

At the moment, some files seems to experience no problem, some mp3s, for example, some divx.. at least 5% of the whole date of the second drive.
But, all the documents, the only thing i have in count, seems to be damaged.

could you tell me why this happen?
isn't definetely there any solution?
i'm trying many hdd or file recover software, so, please let me know if all this trying is unuseful.

thanks,
Francesco
 
Hi Francesco

I am really sorry but I simply cannot explain what has happened to your drive. Leaving Eraser on the default settings should not have caused you any problems. In fact using any setting now shouldn’t cause any problems.

It sounds to me (guessing) that your drive became corrupted or you or someone selected those files for deletion.

I personally run XP Pro SP2 myself with all versions of Eraser up to date and I haven’t had the problem you describe. I did have some problem though with the first and last 2KB option I mentioned before but I think that was sorted out by version 5.84.

If its possible don’t do anything to your drive until Joel has read this thread, he may have some suggestions for you.

I know this is unlikely but please don’t be put off Eraser by this incident. There will be a new version coming out soon and it should be much better.


Sorry.
 
well, thanks for the answer :(
i've already formatted one drive, but i'm leaving all the file son the second, just in case someone gave me some useful advice..
well, i can't believe this happen! :(

so, i'll wait for joel, thanks.
 
moreover: some mp3 are playable, some not: should i leave the playable or should i remove all of them? i mean, when i'll know that there's nothing to do with...

thanks.
 
uhr, well, no, probably you're right, Overwriter, i selected the "first and last 2KB option" in the task advanced options, supposing this should reduce running time.
yes, was definetely selected that option, now i remember clearly...
 
Hi Francesco

uhr, well, no, probably you're right, Overwriter, i selected the "first and last 2KB option"
Click to expand...

Oops. Well then I am afraid that’s it. Unfortunately there is a bug with that option and if a user selects the first and last 2KB option for a free space wipe then I am afraid your data is gone.

That version really should be removed from the download section. Eraser 5.85 final (which does not have that option for free space wipe) will be ready mid to late November so I would hope that all previous versions will be removed.

Sorry Francesco, it looks like bad news for you.
 
Overwriter said:
Hi Francesco

uhr, well, no, probably you're right, Overwriter, i selected the "first and last 2KB option"
Click to expand...

Oops. Well then I am afraid that’s it. Unfortunately there is a bug with that option and if a user selects the first and last 2KB option for a free space wipe then I am afraid your data is gone.

That version really should be removed from the download section.
Click to expand...

To say that that version should be removed is an understatement! If that is a documented bug (i.e., that using that advanced option can fry the files on your drive) it amounts to extreme negligence that the version was not removed the first time the issue was ever reported!

Regards,

jberaser
 
jberaser said:
To say that that version should be removed is an understatement! If that is a documented bug (i.e., that using that advanced option can fry the files on your drive) it amounts to extreme negligence that the version was not removed the first time the issue was ever reported!

Regards,

jberaser
Click to expand...

how i couldn't agree with you?

:(
 
it's not included in v5.84 in the freespace wipe, though it is in the file deletion options. Perhaps the original poster set his file deletion options for this, but that wouldn't affect any other files than those that were being deleted. In 5.84 he couldn't have set it in the Unused Disk Space options.

The original poster specifically says he is using v5.84 so he can't have this as an option that may have caused this problem. Though the problems he outlines ARE consistent with him using the earlier version of Eraser that had this as a freespace option (was it v5.81?). Can the original poster double check what version of Eraser he is using?
 
Robbie said:
Though the problems he outlines ARE consistent with him using the earlier version of Eraser that had this as a freespace option (was it v5.81?).
Click to expand...

Carver said:
The 1st and last 2k was removed for v5.82 llRC.
Click to expand...

Yes that’s right 5.81 was the “problem” release. The 5.81 download link was removed along time ago from here but it must be available elsewhere.

There is a “modified” version of Eraser going around that has shall we say, some issues like this.

Ciropizza stated …

Ciropizza said:
uhr, well, no, probably you're right, Overwriter, i selected the "first and last 2KB option" in the task advanced options, supposing this should reduce running time.
yes, was definetely selected that option, now i remember clearly...
Click to expand...

So, as he was able to select that option he was clearly using 5.81.
 
Overwriter said:
Yes that’s right 5.81 was the “problem” release. The 5.81 download link was removed along time ago from here but it must be available elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Nice to hear the news that this download was removed a long time ago, and I assume that this was when the problem was discovered.

Overwriter said:
There is a “modified” version of Eraser going around that has shall we say, some issues like this.
Click to expand...

An excellent reason not to be using "modified" versions of software. But why would anyone want to use a modified version of a product that is available for free, unmodified, from the developer's site?


Regards,

JoeB
 
jberaser said:
But why would anyone want to use a modified version of a product that is available for free, unmodified, from the developer's site?
Click to expand...

Modified doesn’t mean hacked as in serial or activation bypass. It means new unsupported features. I used the modified version for a while, it wouldn’t really be suitable for general release.
 
jberaser said:
An excellent reason not to be using "modified" versions of software. But why would anyone want to use a modified version of a product that is available for free, unmodified, from the developer's site?


Regards,

JoeB
Click to expand...

as I just wrote, i didn't use any version except the 5.84 i download from sourceforge's link in this site's download page.
 
Overwriter said:
Modified doesn’t mean hacked as in serial or activation bypass. It means new unsupported features. I used the modified version for a while, it wouldn’t really be suitable for general release.
Click to expand...

I was wondering about that and thinking that what you say might be the case. It was the fact that you put the word "modified" in quotes that had me wondering if you meant something different :-)

It shows, however, that it still pays to use the supported versions, even if they themselves can cause problems before someone catches the bug and reports it.

Regards,

JoeB
 
jberaser said:
It shows, however, that it still pays to use the supported versions, even if they themselves can cause problems before someone catches the bug and reports it.

Regards,

JoeB
Click to expand...

well, but i'm not "overwriter" ;)
 
ciropizza said:
jberaser said:
An excellent reason not to be using "modified" versions of software. But why would anyone want to use a modified version of a product that is available for free, unmodified, from the developer's site?


Regards,

JoeB
Click to expand...

as I just wrote, i didn't use any version except the 5.84 i download from sourceforge's link in this site's download page.
Click to expand...

Given what others have said, it's surprising that the 5.84 version on Sourceforge would still have the 5.81 bug, and still have that 2kb option available, given that is supposed to have been removed from versions after 5.81. Hopefully somebody else can explain it and also find a way to get the bad version removed from Sourceforge. It doesn't do the reputation of Heidi or Sourceforge any good.

Regards,

JoeB
 
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