UNUSED DISK SPACE

L

li0nhearts

New Member
Hi all, i am new to eraser.

I dont understand what is the meaning of unused disk space?
why is it good to overwrite unused disk space?

I thought that unused disk space is a space which contains nothing, then why must we overwrite it or delete unused disk space.

Its like erasing something on a blank piece of paper. It doesn't make sense to me.

I hope you guys can correct me and clear my doubts.
Pardon me for the "noobness"

Hope to hear from you guys soon.

Thanks
 
When you delete with “windows delete”, the file header is removed (telling windows that the disk space where the file was is free again). To the user the file appears to be deleted.

But, the file is still there in the free space until another file uses that exact same space on the drive.

Criminals could steal your lap top and run a free space recovery program and view all the files you had thought were deleted. So even though you felt safe that anything sensitive had been deleted the criminals would have a copy of it.

Eraser overwrites all the free space to protect your privacy, so what you think has been deleted is actually deleted ! To be honest this should have been integrated into Windows but there you go !

You could search for “undelete” or “data recovery” programs and see what is lurking on your hard drive !
 
Aright man. thanks for the reply.

but i still have some doubts.
like, say you overwrite the unused disk space with eraser, then the space would have been occupied.
and the unused space becomes occupied then there will be lesser free space remaining in your hard disk?

Please correct me if i am wrong.

Thanks!
 
Yes, the free space is gone or taken up temporarily while Eraser does its thing and then when it has finished the process Eraser deletes all the files it has made to overwrite the unused space with.

So after allowing eraser to complete fully you should be left with the same free space you started with. BUT, you must allow Eraser to finish properly !
 
So if i use eraser to overwrite unused disk space, will i have more disk space than before because eraser deletes those remaining pieces of files that could be recovered?

Pardon me for my "noobness"

(:
 
So if i use eraser to overwrite unused disk space, will i have more disk space than before because eraser deletes those remaining pieces of files that could be recovered?
Click to expand...

Err, no. :?

There is a MFT Master File Table on your hard drive. This holds a list of all the files on your drive and their details such as size and location on the disk. When windows deletes a file it simply removes the name and details from the MFT. The actual data is written somewhere else on the hard drive and this is what recovery programs find and recover.

Because windows only uses the MFT to see what is on the disk it doesn’t matter what is actually written in the free space of the hard drive as windows only sees what is listed in the MFT. So overwriting an area on a disk that the MFT already see’s as free space and available will not gain you any more space.

To gain more space you need to delete something that windows see’s as there or active in the MFT.

It is a little hard to explain but once you “get it” it makes sense ! :lol:
 
Oic. In other words, what eraser does is that it deletes those files and it will be difficult to recover and a possibility that you're unable to recover the data?
 
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