Features . . .
I'm having some problems posting a reply here . . . always says "document contains no data" and refuses to let me prereview or submit my reply. I've found that I have to split my response in order to submit it. More will follow
OS_Law said:
preserve restore points when erasing free space
This is something Windows does when the disk space gets low. Is there a way to disable this?
There are wipe utilities that have this as an option. I'm probably mistaken regarding how Eraser works when doing a free space wipe, but my understanding of it is that it basically creates a huge file or a number of huge files that are rewritten with the pattern you choose. The problem comes from Eraser enlarging the file(s) to the point where windows believes that it has less than 200/80/50 megs of free space left (there are three specific "trip points" for warnings and paring back of the Restore points - 50 megs or less free space wipes all restore points and disables (temporarily) System Restore). Alternatives would be to:
1. have Eraser target clusters instead of creating a monolithic file that keeps on growing. Once specific clusters have been wiped, they can be released. This may be too significant of a re-write to be feasible though because Eraser would have to track which clusters contain files and which are unused and it would also have to contend with Windows swap space (or turn it off prior to the wipe).
2. Have Eraser do a registry modification prior to performing the wipe - e.g. See
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;295659 . This Micro$oft support article specifies three values that might be of interest (of course, the developer would need a system they felt comfortable playing with the registry on ;-)) - setting
DSMin to "0" might get rid of the warnings altogether and keep the restore point files;
DisableSR - turns off System Restore in the registry and will (apparently) keep windows from deleting the restore points and thus preserve the restore points and (conceivably)
TimerInterval - set SR to check for free diskspace at such a high time interval that it couldn't conceivably interfere with the wipe. After the wipe is done, Eraser can then set the registry back to its original status.
OS_Law said:
ability to wipe file names under 98/ME
Eraser already does this, right?
On my ME machine, Eraser will hang the system completely (except for mouse movement) if I leave the "Filenames" check box checked. It might be a prob with my system. I'm just basing it on my experience.
OS_Law said:
Could you be more specific, better how?
Better help? While there is context specific help for the "general preferences", there is none for the "Erasing" preference settings. I would think that it would be more important to have context specific help for "Erasing" than for "general" settings.
Also, to my knowledge, there is no "manual." A manual in PDF format, that explained a number of the features and how they work would be useful because many things are left unexplained, such as: reasons for wiping; how to setup wipes of specific files/folders for maintaining privacy; warnings regarding faults of the program (such as the system restore problem above and the paging file (if that is a problem)); what cluster tips are and why should they be wiped (e.g. is this the "slack space" other progs refer to?) Much of this information is simply left to the forum or self-discovery (which has been to few users' chagrin).
