carleraser
New Member
How do I set up Eraser to erase deleted emails in my Thunderbird account ?Documentsandsettings/JoeDoe/application data/ ........??????????
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Thunderbird ?
- Thread starter carleraser
- Start date
Well, first you'll need to empty trash. Second, you'll need to compress all mailboxes (deleting mail without compressing doesn't actually delete the text of the email in the mailbox file). Third, I believe you'll need to wipe freespace on the hard drive, since essentially what deleting mail and compressing the mailboxes does is shorten text files. This may leave the text of old emails sitting in unallocated clusters; if you don't know where those clusters are, you'll need to wipe freespace to get rid of the text.
So, to break it down:
1) Delete the email you want to delete, and empty the trash.
2) Compact folders (command is found under the "File" menu)
3) Close Thunderbird
4) Wipe Freespace
So, to break it down:
1) Delete the email you want to delete, and empty the trash.
2) Compact folders (command is found under the "File" menu)
3) Close Thunderbird
4) Wipe Freespace
carleraser
New Member
Thank you Kythe. I will go through those steps 1-4 tonight. Do you know of any way to set it up so that it gets erased "on demand" with the other items I regularly erase ? like : Documentsandsettings/JoeSmith/ApplicationData/....?
carleraser said:Thank you Kythe. I will go through those steps 1-4 tonight. Do you know of any way to set it up so that it gets erased "on demand" with the other items I regularly erase ? like : Documentsandsettings/JoeSmith/ApplicationData/....?
Off hand, I don't...you can certainly automate clearing freespace on shutdown (at least, if you have Windows XP Pro--not sure how you'd do it in WinXP Home or older OS's) using a shutdown script. I do exactly that on my system.
Otherwise, you can set Eraser to clear freespace at, say, midnight every night using Eraser's scheduler. All you have to do then is leave your computer on.
As an aside, if you want to clear freespace in order to eliminate deleted email mailbox file material and don't want to wipe the freespace on your entire drive, you can partition your drive into two or more partitions, and put your Thunderbird profile (plus, perhaps, your Firefox cache and other critical info) on a small partition. That way, you can set Eraser to just erase the freespace on the small partition. Much faster.
carleraser
New Member
More great info.. Thanks very much !