Is it OK to run Eraser on the same drive it resides?

M

majax

New Member
I want to erase free space on my C drive, which is the same drive I planned to have Eraser on. Would that create any type of conflict?

Also, I did a test run of my C drive (320GB) and after an hour it was only a smidgen complete according to the progress bar. I chose 1 pass of pseudorandom data. I also selected to erase cluster tips, which produced 100s of errors regarding files that are still on my HD. Why is Eraser going through files that haven't been deleted and is there any type of benchmark on how long it should take to wipe 279 GB using 1 pass?
 
I think David's Getting to Know Eraser 6 post in the FAQ answers most of this question.

Anyway, cluster tips are the free space at the end of a file before the end of the cluster (files are aligned to clusters on file systems.) As such, erasing these would require opening and closing every single file to clear them. This is normal. The errors are raised because Windows protects quite a number of files to prevent unintended modification. Eraser is probably a bit too careful to report the failure of every single one of those files, which would explain your large number of errors. The amount of time spent Erasing cluster tips would, based on my given definition, be dependent on the number of files residing on the drive. As such, the greater the number of files on the drive, the longer the time spent erasing cluster tips.

After erasing cluster tips, Eraser will proceed to erase the free space on the drive. This would be significantly faster, and would be dependent on the amount of free space left on the drive. Upon completion, there's one final phase which is to erase the old MFT/FAT directory entries, these are a different beat altogether and as of now there's no accurate way of determining the amount of time required for either.

Hope this helps.
 
Thanks for the information. I was successfully able to do a wipe and Recuva, with a deep clean, was unable to pull up any files other than blank gif and jpgs. Woohoo!
 
Glad to hear it works for you. Ask again in a separate thread if you have other things to clarify.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top