hiberfil.sys????

P

phibins

New Member
Does ERASER at all tackles the hiberfil.sys when erasing space?? if not, should this feature be added, where eraser decompresses the file and erases the data contained in it.

Also, i am less familiar with the pagefile.sys file, but from what i understand it is used as a 'virtual memory' file. This can pose a risk of contain sensitive info.

Are these system files at all tackled by ERASER? if so how?
 
Eraser's free space erase only erases free space. You'd expect nothing else :) . System files are not in free space.

Both hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys are protected Windows files, and can only be dealt with by changing Windows settings (perhaps temporarily) and then running a free space erase. I am not sure that it is even possible to do this 'on the fly' ; if it were, I am sure that CCleaner, for example, would have just such an option. There are of course tweaking programs and command line utilities that can change the settings, but it's probably as easy to do this in Control Panel.

David
 
Given that the files cannot be directly deleted, much less erased, what feature are you suggesting?

David
 
I think if you wanted to clear the hiberfil.sys then you can turn it off under advanced power functions.
Turning off hibernation unlocked the disk space allocated to hiberfil.sys.

I understand that It would be nice to have a button.option that would if set, remove the option, run and reset it after the clean was done, but you can do that yourself. it's a click or two.. but you can.

even more important is the DAT files hidden in the system including the index.dat file.
you remove history but they have it buried in the system a secondary complete log that when you clear the temp files.. it's missed.

you may want to pull Privacy Mantra and use it in combo when using eraser. Understand the options because it will even get rid of stored cookies, passwords, whatever.

so turn off hibernation in power options, turn off virtual ram, run privacy mantra, then erase..
 
There are a number of privacy programs. For proper cleaning, they need to overwrite and not just delete the cleaned files. I use CCleaner, because it has this option. That said, the general warning about unsuspected clutter being the greatest threat to privacy/security is one I would most definitely agree with.

Note that when hibernation is turned off, the file is (as far as I know) deleted and not erased; you would need to run a free space erase (perhaps after a reboot) to remove the data. I'd guess (Joel will know better) that this makes it a rather poor candidate for an Eraser feature.

David
 
Yes, your analysis is correct. Disabling the hibernation file will cause it to be deleted and to erase the contents a free space erase must be completed. Hence, this is not really amenable to implementation in Eraser.

If privacy was a concern to you, you may prefer to try Full Disk encryption instead and disable hibernation.
 
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