Questions about Erasing the Free Space

[johny03]

Hi, I want to Erase the Free Space on the drive and I've got a few questions:


1.) Is it safe to wipe the free space of a system drive? What can go wrong?

2.) How long would the process take? (System Disc: 100GB, CPU: 1.3GHz, RAM: 2GB)

3.) Is there something else I need do/know before doing it? (Besides disabling my antivirus)


Thanks in advance

 

[DavidHB]

Is it safe to wipe the free space of a system drive?

If, by 'safe', you mean that nothing will be deleted that you don't want deleted, the answer is yes.

What can go wrong?

Actually not a lot. I suggest that you read the FAQ posts on Getting to know Eraser 6 and Common Eraser Questions. What will happen is that there will be a large number of 'error' messages in the log relating to (mostly system) files whose cluster tips cannot be erased. If those are all the error messages you get, that is not a big issue.

How long would the process take? (System Disc: 100GB, CPU: 1.3GHz, RAM: 2GB)

It really depends on how much free space there is on the drive. My guess is 2-3 hours, but the time can vary very considerably. I suggest sticking with the default single pass erasing method to minimize the time (which is a function of the amount of space to be erased and the performance of the hard drive more than anything else).

Is there something else I need do/know before doing it? (Besides disabling my antivirus)

As you clearly wish to be careful, a sensible precaution would be to run a drive check (reboot required) before running a free space erase. Also, in Vista or Windows 7, you will need to run Eraser as Administrator (details in the FAQ). If the computer is a laptop, do the erase while running on mains, not battery, power. And if you also plan to defragment the drive, do it before you run the free space erase.

David

 

[johny03]

Thank you for your response that fully answered all my questions!

One more thing. It reads in FAQ that and the process should not be done too often. Does this apply to all the partitions of the hard hard disc or just to the system drive? And does this apply to other file shredders as well?

 

[DavidHB]

Your last question is a good one. By its nature, a free space erase works the drive rather hard, and that is true of any drive. I have never had a drive fail when using Eraser, but I could certainly imagine that it might push a drive that was beginning to fail over the edge. So a free space erase is probably not something I would do every day; it takes too long anyway. In practice, I don't think that many users would be inclined to use the function so often that they would shorten hard drive life, but there have to be health warnings for those who might attempt some really intensive use.

David