Problem Shredding Compressed Files

R

RandomPerson

New Member
Ever since I have used Eraser I have been having problems with shredding compressed files such as .zip and .mp3 I have almost always gotten this error:

could not be erased because the file was either compressed,encrypted or a sparse file

I'm lost for thought on this one I have successfully shredded these kind of files before however do not know what might be causing this. I am using Eraser v6.0.6.1376
 
This is what Eraser Help says about the error message.

If you are using Windows 2000 or later, as well as having an NTFS file system, you have the option of encrypting and/or compressing your files. Also, programs are able to set files as “sparse”, which means that long stretches of data which are absent will occupy zero disk space. Because encrypted files, compressed files and sparse behave differently when applying the standard erasure procedure, Eraser will not erase such files when they are encountered and will instead log an error.

So you might see the error if your hard drive is set to encrypt or compress files, or if programs are saving files as 'sparse'. Alternatively, Eraser, for some reason, may be wrongly interpreting the files as encrypted/compressed by the disk system; that would be one for Joel to advise on. Which OS are you using?

David
 
Are any of your disks set to run compressed or encrypted?

David
 
No I have not set them as such however how do I check for an Encrypted or Compressed disk. Also I have just realized that eraser is no longer erroring on mp3 and zip (idk maybe a windows update or something forgot to check if it was still a problem before i posted my bad, and also they have stopped erroring before and then have done it again) however I still had the problem with a zip file the other day after my last updates
 
Compressed files are not the usual "zip" files that you use, rather, files which are transparently encrypted by the file system (NTFS inthis case) The storage format of compressed, encrypted and sparse files are slightly different, so Eraser cannot readily erase them like usual.

I've got an idea written in my development notebook that I need to experiment, but this really will need time and is probably near the end of the todo list for me.
 
In experiments I am doing on erasing free space, Eraser identifies files with the 7zip extension as compressed and therefore untouchable. I don't know whether that is a related issue.

David
 
Eraser doesn't recognize file types, it is file type agnostic. Your 7-zip files in the other thread is definitely caused by the file attributes declaring compressed, encrypted or sparse.
 
Joel said:
Eraser doesn't recognize file types, it is file type agnostic. Your 7-zip files in the other thread is definitely caused by the file attributes declaring compressed, encrypted or sparse.
Click to expand...
Just to confirm that Joel was correct about this. What caught me was that the files were not compressed, but the folder they were contained in was. By default, these folders are displayed in a different colour. It's worth checking the folder as well as the files.

David
 
But the files itself aren't, so I don't understand why this is happening either. could you set up a Trac ticket for me to investigate this? Thanks!
 
Joel said:
Could you set up a Trac ticket for me to investigate this? Thanks!
Click to expand...
Done.

David
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top