Overwrite a single file that has already been deleted?

[TheMohawkNinja]

I've been using Puran File Recovery to make sure that the files actually are deleted, and either Puran is an extremely good file recovery program, or Eraser isn't doing what I want it to.

At first, I recovered the file I wanted to overwrite and told Eraser to do a 7-pass DoD algorithm on it. Puran found the file no problem. Upon recovering the file again, I noticed that Puran still picked up the file as recoverable even though it had already been recovered.

I then ran a 7-pass DoD algorithm on all the unused disk space on my HDD (with cluster tips checked), and after about 2 full days, the completion bar seemed to freeze at 90-95% complete, so I stopped the task. I deleted what appeared to be all of the overwritting files (a whole bunch of randomly named files in a randomly named folder than took up ~734 GB), and upon running Puran again to check, it not only found all of the files before I ran the 7-pass DoD algorithm, but it found four thousand more (most, if not all of which I assumed to be the overwritting files).

To breakdown exactly what I'm doing in the program step-by-step:

• Right-click in Erase Schedule and left-click on 'New Task'
• Leave Task Name blank, and select 'Run Manually'
• Click 'Add' button'
• Select the DoD erasure method that is right below the 35-pass Gutmann algorithm
• Select 'Unused Disk Space'
• Make sure that 'Erase Cluster Tips' is checked
• Hit 'Ok'
• Hit 'Ok'
• Right-click on the new task in the Task Schedule, and left-click on 'Start Task'
• Wait until task completes (or in the actual case, when it appeared to freeze, whereby I manually ended it and deleted the overwritting files)
• Open Puran File Recovery to assure that the files are gone.

 

[garrett01]

Few things to note:

1. The 000's of files it recovers after a wipe are the random data files eraser creates during erase.
2. Files which seem to be recovered should be full of random data.


What happens if you
1. Erase a file with known data e.g 'aaaaaaaaa' in a txt file can you recover it?
2. Create and delete a file then empty the recycle bin and then run a freespace wipe. Can you recover the file?

Also make sure the recovery app is not creating a shadow recycle bin in which case it is bypassing eraser by storing the files itself.