passes? 1 erase @ 3 passes vs 3 erases @ 1 pass

[in the dark]

New and neophyte and only slightly paranoid so I 'm wondering about erasing. If Eraser is used for unused disk space over time is there a cumulative effect of the passes? AND I never considered where all this stuff might be stored and couldn't definitively ascertain by reading all the posts (not because they are not clear but because I am not clear)--does one have to run Eraser thru specific files in registry, outlook, thunderbird, explorer, and firefox? If so, what else? (Not worried about investigations but I would hate to flop over dead and have people read my musings and searches).

 

[Kythe]

New and neophyte and only slightly paranoid so I 'm wondering about erasing. If Eraser is used for unused disk space over time is there a cumulative effect of the passes? AND I never considered where all this stuff might be stored and couldn't definitively ascertain by reading all the posts (not because they are not clear but because I am not clear)--does one have to run Eraser thru specific files in registry, outlook, thunderbird, explorer, and firefox? If so, what else? (Not worried about investigations but I would hate to flop over dead and have people read my musings and searches).

There will be a cumulative effect of the passes in terms of recoverability of very old data that's been overwritten multiple times, so yes, running eraser three times with one pass each is essentially equivalent to running once with three passes. Of course, someone would have to use hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and many man-hours to examine your hard drive in such detail that multiple passes would matter, anyway. So unless we're talking major criminal activity or big-time industrial espionage by competitors, you probably don't have to worry about that.

One overwrite pass is all that's needed to foil most examinations your drive is ever likely to face.

In general, normal deletion of files followed by freespace wipes will get rid of much of your personal information that would otherwise be available. If you want to know more about what you can do to protect your privacy, a lot of ground can be found here:

http://www.cipherserver.com/phpbb2/view ... 2dd0ce5632