IMPORTANT: ALL ERASER USERS - NEW VERSION PLANNED

garrett01

Administrator
Staff member
Hi all,

We are planning to develop a new version of Eraser beginning 2005.

We have lots of suggestions, however, we would be grateful if you could let us know of any particular features you would like to see.
We will do our best to take on board as many of your suggestions as we feasibly can.

Best regards,

Eraser Admin
 
The ability to erase registry entries and/or defrag the registry.

The ability to "purge" file names in FAT32 partitions like Directory Snoop.
 
Thought of two more features:

The ability to schedule tasks to run at shutdown.

The ability to specify wildcards with the -folder parameter, i.e.,

eraserl -folder c:\tes*\folder

Thanks for all the hard work you guys do.
 
This may be tedious... But a more automatic IE history delete feature. or something. something similar to that of other scrubbers.
 
Swap file

Re; The swap/paging file.
I suspect my ignorance is showing here,but would it be possible to initiate erasing of the swap file without leaving the Windows UI?
 
Re: Swap file

A visitor said:
Re; The swap/paging file.
I suspect my ignorance is showing here,but would it be possible to initiate erasing of the swap file without leaving the Windows UI?

Nope.
 
Task-specific erasing settings. I use a custom erase mode which simply zeroes out a file when I'm deleting non-critical files--after a drive crash, it's easier to identify recovery targets if the drive isn't loaded with near duplicate files. When I delete sensitive info such as source code or financials, I want a more secure method of erasure.

In a dream world, you could hook the OS' delete function so that all file deletions are done securely.
 
When erasing a single file using the shell extention, Eraser reports it as " in use".

Often if you copy and paste the file to the same location then select the original and the copy, Eraser will remove both files.

Perhaps this is more of a tip than a fault.
 
When erasing the NTFS MFT entries
in the end do like Directory snoop write zeroes(?) to all fields including Parent, Flags, Ns, Attr.

It seems that if this is done then some major recovery programs don't bother to detect these empty records att all but if there is random stuff they will show them.
 
New features suggestions

Well, as long as you asked . . .

Options to:

-preserve restore points when erasing free space
- clean swap file -e.g. BestWipe or Cryptoswap Guerilla
- ability to wipe file names under 98/ME
- better help/manual
- integration with some encryption programs? truecrypt? E4M? Scramdisk? so there is automatic secure wipe of files moved into container
- ability to create file type wipe - e.g. *.jpg;*.doc, etc. either system wide or in folder
- option to have hardware based "autodestruct" button
-easy check items for most recent used lists/cookies/history/temp files/scandisk recovered clusters/ like MRU-Blaster so they can be securely erased w/o too much setup by user
- integration into Thunderbird & Outlook to securely wipe deleted email. (ok Thunderbird users, this could prob by done through an extension to Thunderbird, likewise with the cache on Firefox)

That's it for now . . . heh. Prob think of some more stuff to keep you busy later.
 
For the people suggesting Eraser should attempt to erase the swap file while Windows is running, please read the FAQ.
 
Erase a complete physical drive from Windows GUI

My suggestion is to add the possibility to erase complete discs (not the system-disc of course) from within the Eraser Windows GUI.
 
A sort of pet peeve of mine, which still hasn't been fixed is the toolbar. The icons just don't look right. See http://img130.exs.cx/img130/3924/erasers4tu.png for a side by side comparison of the toolbar in Eraser 5.3 and 5.7.

The ability to erase registry entries and/or defrag the registry.
An entire hive of the Windows registry is stored in a single file, so I don't think single entries can be securely erased. The same goes for single email messages stored in an Outlook folder. I don't think Eraser should go into the business of defragmenting stuff either. :)

CasualObserver said:
In a dream world, you could hook the OS' delete function so that all file deletions are done securely.
In a dream world, the entire file system would be encrypted, so you wouldn't have to worry about overwriting everything. And if someone stole your laptop, they couldn't get to your data either.

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?
OS_Law said:
ability to wipe file names under 98/ME
Eraser already does this, right?
OS_Law said:
better help/manual
Could you be more specific, better how?
OS_Law said:
integration with some encryption programs
I think there might be some licensing problems. Eraser being GPL'd and most of these other programs not. You can still use the "Secure Move" facility in Eraser to erase files you move to an encrypted container.

Anyway, thank you guys for maintaining Eraser so people can keep on using it.
 
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:
better help/manual
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).
 
Follow up . . .

OS_Law said:
integration with some encryption programs
I think there might be some licensing problems. Eraser being GPL'd and most of these other programs not. You can still use the "Secure Move" facility in Eraser to erase files you move to an encrypted container.
Yes, some may be problematic, but I doubt it. You wouldn't have to compile the prog into it or even necessarily link to it. Just scan the registry to see if it's there and perform the operation - and you may not even need to do that if the container has a header or other info that identifies it as an encrypted container. The bigger problem would be the fact that, to the OS, these are simply other drives, so Eraser would have to be able to distinguish which are "real" drives and which are containers.

However, there are a number of OTFE progs that have no GPL probs - TrueCrypt (http://truecrypt.sourceforge.net/), Free OTFE (http://www.freeotfe.org/), Scramdisk (http://www.samsimpson.com/cryptography/scramdisk/) and E4M (http://www.samsimpson.com/cryptography/scramdisk/#dloade) are all examples of GPL OTFE progs (although Scramdisk and E4M are no longer maintained (albeit TrueCrypt might be viewed as a well-maintained fork of E4M)). Of course, this is probably not exactly the biggest issue because, as you pointed out, there is a secure move option in the right-click menu.

BTW, of the four, TrueCrypt would be my recommendation of choice. However, it only works on Win2000 and above - it doesn't work on win9x/ME, for those OSes, you have to choose one of the others OTFE progs. Scramdisk and E4M are no longer maintained so I couldn't recommend them first (although they work, as-is) and Free OTFE is still too early in its development cycle (although it looks promising).
 
Bump / Sticky

I'm posting b/c this thread needs to be "bumped" and be given "sticky" status.
 
Preserving restore points

To expand on my earlier post on how Eraser might do a freespace wipe without Windoze XP deleting the restore points, where I stated:

Have Eraser do a registry modification prior to performing the wipe - e.g. See http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -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 Wink) - 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.

The following registry trick might perform the same function. Specifically, it tells windoze to not perform a low disk space check. Therefore, you won't get those annoying little warnings when your free space dips below 200 MB, 80MB and 50 MB respectively. I presume that one would have to reboot XP after the registration mods, then do the wipe, then reboot and restore the values to their original settings. I'll grant, it's a little tedious to do, but it does serve an important function in maintaing restore points.

;NoLowDiskSpaceChecks won't check if you are low on diskspace or pop-up a balloon telling you.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoLowDiskSpaceChecks"=dword:00000001
 
A feature i`d like to see .. would be to have ERASER rename the file before deletion , removing the file extension.
E.G - "FILE.EXE" becomes "xxxyyyzzz" i`ve noticed that erased files show as "xvfsre.kjh" as an example, keeping the 3 letter file extension.

Does that make sense?
 
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