Only erase up to a certain percentage of disk

[daern]

Ok, here's an interesting question that I can't find elsewhere:

Is there a way to configure Eraser to only consume up to a certain percentage of the free disk space on a volume during its erasure process?
e.g. if I point it at e:\, I would only like it to write balloon files up to 90% of the free disk space This is to ensure that 10% is always left available to avoid killing other applications that may require to grow files during the erasure process.

To answer concerns, I am not using Eraser for a security related purpose. I have other uses for it...

 

[Joel]

I believe this thread details Ballast files and how to create them. Eraser isn't currently designed for this purpose, so be careful.

 

[daern]

I believe this thread details Ballast files and how to create them. Eraser isn't currently designed for this purpose, so be careful.

Hi Joel,

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, this actually makes the issue worse for me as it effectively fills the disk up all of the time.

Here's an example:

1. Disk d:\ has 100GB free
2. Eraser kicks off and attempts to fill this 100GB with files filled with zeroed data
3. During this time, a process attempts to create a 10GB file and fails because the disk is already full of temporary Eraser files.

In this case, creating "ballast" files simply reduces the space available before Eraser starts. The net effect is the same.

What I really wanted was to be able to tell Eraser to only ever fill up to 80%, or freespace-20GB or something, thus ensuring that most of the disk freespace is zeroed, but enough space is always left for process use.

Regards,

Daern

 

[Joel]

What I really wanted was to be able to tell Eraser to only ever fill up to 80%, or freespace-20GB or something, thus ensuring that most of the disk freespace is zeroed, but enough space is always left for process use.

But if Eraser fills up the disk till 80% fullness, you'd still have the same problem if a program suddenly wants to create a file which is > 20% the size of your disk? I think I'm missing something here.