Recycle Bin not being totally erased - 6.0.7.1893

S

slipaway

New Member
I've searched around for this problem being discussed but no luck.

I'm running Eraser 6.0.7.1893 on Vista 64 and did an Erase on my Recycle Bin from the context menu. The task showed up and ran, but it did not erase the files I deleted from my external HD, which is a FAT32 format. Any ideas why it's not erasing them? I do recall there was an issue with an earlier version of Eraser where the MFT was not updated on external FAT32 drives, but that was fixed in a later version.
 
If you haven't done so, can you please check that the files are actually recoverable, i.e. that they still exist.

If they do, the first thing to check for is some sort of permissions issue. Check in the FAQ (link below), e.g in the Getting to know Eraser topic, and try running Eraser as Administrator.

Also, just to check, I'm assuming that the external drive is a conventional hard drive. If it's a flash drive, we are into a different ball game; there's a topic on that in the FAQ as well.

David
 
slipaway said:
The task showed up and ran, but it did not erase the files I deleted from my external HD, which is a FAT32 format.
Click to expand...
Any errors in the Task Log?
 
DavidHB said:
If you haven't done so, can you please check that the files are actually recoverable, i.e. that they still exist.

If they do, the first thing to check for is some sort of permissions issue. Check in the FAQ (link below), e.g in the Getting to know Eraser topic, and try running Eraser as Administrator.

Also, just to check, I'm assuming that the external drive is a conventional hard drive. If it's a flash drive, we are into a different ball game; there's a topic on that in the FAQ as well.

David
Click to expand...

I ran Recuva and it looks like the files are unrecoverable, but it seems like they are still in the MFT if they are still in my Recycle Bin, right? I ran another RB task as Adminstrator manually and no luck, and yes it's a conventional drive.


Joel said:
slipaway said:
The task showed up and ran, but it did not erase the files I deleted from my external HD, which is a FAT32 format.
Click to expand...
Any errors in the Task Log?
Click to expand...

I couldn't find the task log, but Eraser doesn't mention any errors. I did an Erase for unused disk space on the drive and that one crashed Eraser after it was done, I could see it said finished but with errors but had to shut it down so I couldn't read anything. Would this have anything to do with the old version not being able to erase the MFT on FAT32 drives?
 
slipaway said:
I'm running Eraser 6.0.7.1893 on Vista 64 and did an Erase on my Recycle Bin from the context menu. The task showed up and ran, but it did not erase the files I deleted from my external HD, which is a FAT32 format. Any ideas why it's not erasing them? I do recall there was an issue with an earlier version of Eraser where the MFT was not updated on external FAT32 drives, but that was fixed in a later version.
Click to expand...
Okay. So did you erase the files or did you erase unused space? How do you know Eraser is not erasing the files? The FAT and all directory entries are now wiped on FAT drives (excluding exFAT, which is patented)

slipaway said:
I couldn't find the task log, but Eraser doesn't mention any errors. I did an Erase for unused disk space on the drive and that one crashed Eraser after it was done, I could see it said finished but with errors but had to shut it down so I couldn't read anything. Would this have anything to do with the old version not being able to erase the MFT on FAT32 drives?
Click to expand...
Eraser is able to erase directory entries on FAT file systems since 6.0.6. Did you check whether your disk had any file system errors using chkdsk?
 
Joel said:
slipaway said:
I'm running Eraser 6.0.7.1893 on Vista 64 and did an Erase on my Recycle Bin from the context menu. The task showed up and ran, but it did not erase the files I deleted from my external HD, which is a FAT32 format. Any ideas why it's not erasing them? I do recall there was an issue with an earlier version of Eraser where the MFT was not updated on external FAT32 drives, but that was fixed in a later version.
Click to expand...
Okay. So did you erase the files or did you erase unused space? How do you know Eraser is not erasing the files? The FAT and all directory entries are now wiped on FAT drives (excluding exFAT, which is patented)
Click to expand...

I did both, first I did a Recycle Bin erase and when I saw the files still sitting in there and not showing it empty, I assumed it had not erased them, so then I did an unused space erase. From what I can see the files were overwritten when I run Recuva, but files names still show up and are still in the RB. Should the RB not be empty if they were erased?

Joel said:
slipaway said:
I couldn't find the task log, but Eraser doesn't mention any errors. I did an Erase for unused disk space on the drive and that one crashed Eraser after it was done, I could see it said finished but with errors but had to shut it down so I couldn't read anything. Would this have anything to do with the old version not being able to erase the MFT on FAT32 drives?
Click to expand...
Eraser is able to erase directory entries on FAT file systems since 6.0.6. Did you check whether your disk had any file system errors using chkdsk?
Click to expand...

I'll give this a shot.
 
slipaway said:
From what I can see the files were overwritten when I run Recuva, but files names still show up and are still in the RB. Should the RB not be empty if they were erased?
Click to expand...
Yes. And the fact that they're still there after a free space erase is also abnormal. So Joel's advice to use Check Disk is the obvious next step.

David
 
DavidHB said:
slipaway said:
From what I can see the files were overwritten when I run Recuva, but files names still show up and are still in the RB. Should the RB not be empty if they were erased?
Click to expand...
Yes. And the fact that they're still there after a free space erase is also abnormal. So Joel's advice to use Check Disk is the obvious next step.

David
Click to expand...

I ran chkdsk on the drive and it said Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
 
In which case, you may need to do what I had to do, and find a way to boot your machine from other than the current OS and to delete the Recycled folder on the affected drive; I don't think Windows will let you do this, even on a non-system drive. Alternatively, you could back up the drive, reformat it and restore it.

David
 
Maybe before you try David's suggestion, you can answer my initial questions. Also, how do you know that the deleted files are still in the recycle bin?
 
Joel said:
Maybe before you try David's suggestion, you can answer my initial questions. Also, how do you know that the deleted files are still in the recycle bin?
Click to expand...

Joel, I thought I quoted and answered all your questions, which one did I miss? I can see the files in the recycle bin. It is not emptied and if I wanted to prevent someone from seeing these files on that drive I would fail because they could easily see the RB is not empty and just explore it and see the file names clear as day. I stated that the files are not actually there and recoverable, but they are still being referenced and visible in the RB. Could I just empty it and they would not be visible? Probably but I'm trying to find out why after Erasing them they are still being referenced.
 
On re-reading all of this, I have just woken up to the fact that you used Recuva to check whether the files are recoverable. But it's not clear (to me at least) whether you actually tried restoring the files from the Recycle Bin. If they can be restored, that means Eraser did not work at all (suspect permissions); if they can't, that's possibly a glitch with Eraser, but more likely a file system issue. In the first case, try running Eraser as administrator (close the running instance first); in the second, with due respect to Joel, I'm back to my earlier advice.

David
 
DavidHB said:
On re-reading all of this, I have just woken up to the fact that you used Recuva to check whether the files are recoverable. But it's not clear (to me at least) whether you actually tried restoring the files from the Recycle Bin. If they can be restored, that means Eraser did not work at all (suspect permissions); if they can't, that's possibly a glitch with Eraser, but more likely a file system issue. In the first case, try running Eraser as administrator (close the running instance first); in the second, with due respect to Joel, I'm back to my earlier advice.

David
Click to expand...

Ok I reran it as admin again, and after doing so I was able to restore a file onto the external drive. This time I was able to get a task log without it crashing. It said:

Session: Monday, August 09, 2010 10:16:28 AM
Monday, August 09, 2010 10:16:56 AM Error Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))

This is strange, since Recuva said the files had been overwritten and were in red text.
 
Just checking. Did you stop the running process before running as Admin?

David
 
Joel said:
It sounds like http://bbs.heidi.ie/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5708.
Click to expand...

I went ahead and did that, ran as admin with a new instance of Eraser running, unused space on my external drive. Eraser crashes at the end of the wipe and forces me to shut it down. I believe this happened the first time I tried to clean the empty space also. Recuva is still showing tons of deleted files on the drive that can't be recovered, but also now the files that I was originally trying to erase from the RB as recoverable. Seems to me there is an issue clearing out the files from the MFT.
 
This sounds, at least in part, like an issue which is well known, and now mostly resolved in the development builds. There may still be problems with the Recycle Bin database (as described in the thread Joel linked to), and it is also worth checking that the crash didn't leave behind any of Eraser's temporary files and so 'lose' free space; that is covered in the FAQ. But, to resolve the crashes and get the MFT cleared, you could try a recent development build (I'm currently using 2241). These come with the expected health warnings, but, on my machines (3 tried, Vista x86, Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64), 2241 is running as well as, and in some respects better than, the 'stable' version.

David
 
I think initially I had the wrong idea of what you were doing, sorry. Let me summarise: You wanted to erase the recycle bin on an external drive, but that failed with Access Denied. The files were still in the recycle bin. You then did a free space erase and Eraser crashes near the end. The FAQ link has resolved your first point but Eraser still crashes when erasing the unused space of the external drive (which is formatted using FAT32).

I'll also suggest taking David's suggestion of running a development build. Join the Beta Testers group, and in the Beta Testers' forum follow the instructions to enable crash reporting before running the unused space erase again. If the crash still occurs, this time you have debug information ready to be provided so that the bug can be fixed. I suspect that the root cause of this is a corrupt directory index or a non-standard index, but I wouldn't hazard to commit to any explanation until the data is available. Do let us know what happens next, I think we're all interested to know.
 
DavidHB said:
This sounds, at least in part, like an issue which is well known, and now mostly resolved in the development builds. There may still be problems with the Recycle Bin database (as described in the thread Joel linked to), and it is also worth checking that the crash didn't leave behind any of Eraser's temporary files and so 'lose' free space; that is covered in the FAQ. But, to resolve the crashes and get the MFT cleared, you could try a recent development build (I'm currently using 2241). These come with the expected health warnings, but, on my machines (3 tried, Vista x86, Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64), 2241 is running as well as, and in some respects better than, the 'stable' version.

David
Click to expand...

I'll look into that build. So far I have not gotten the well-known losing free space.

Joel said:
I think initially I had the wrong idea of what you were doing, sorry. Let me summarise: You wanted to erase the recycle bin on an external drive, but that failed with Access Denied. The files were still in the recycle bin. You then did a free space erase and Eraser crashes near the end. The FAQ link has resolved your first point but Eraser still crashes when erasing the unused space of the external drive (which is formatted using FAT32).

I'll also suggest taking David's suggestion of running a development build. Join the Beta Testers group, and in the Beta Testers' forum follow the instructions to enable crash reporting before running the unused space erase again. If the crash still occurs, this time you have debug information ready to be provided so that the bug can be fixed. I suspect that the root cause of this is a corrupt directory index or a non-standard index, but I wouldn't hazard to commit to any explanation until the data is available. Do let us know what happens next, I think we're all interested to know.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, I was trying to erase the RB on my desktop, which had files I deleted from the external FAT32 drive. Those are the files that won't go away. Yes, that was when I got the Access Denied error. Correct on the free space erase causing Eraser to crash at the very end, but I still cannot even erase the files in the RB using the FAQ. It's as if Eraser doesn't update that they are to be removed from the RB and the MFT for the drive.
 
I installed build 2241, deleted a file to the RB from the external drive and ran Eraser as Admin on it. It deleted all the files except for the one from the external drive.

I then ran a free space erase on the external, it got to the end and again and stopped working. Here is what the Windows problem signature said when it crashed:

Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: eraser.exe
Problem Signature 02: 6.1.0.2112
Problem Signature 03: 4c59903a
Problem Signature 04: Eraser.Util
Problem Signature 05: 6.1.0.2112
Problem Signature 06: 4c598ff2
Problem Signature 07: 28e
Problem Signature 08: 60
Problem Signature 09: System.UnauthorizedAccess
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.6
Locale ID: 1033
 
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