Windows 2000

T

tigerbiter

New Member
I understand that Windows 2000 creates a temporary, or backup, file of each file that is accessed or changed.
I could be wrong, but that is what I've heard.
I've heard that Eraser cannot touch these backups.
Apparently, Eraser can't erase a file that has been formatted with Unicode.
How does Eraser deal with this, for real?
Is it even worthwhile to use Eraser under these circumstances?

Is this true?
If it is, how does a user deal with these issues?

Thanks.
 
If Windows 2000 did what you describe, it would double the hard disk space needed to do anything. Short answer: no, it doesn't do this. Windows does use swap space as a form of virtual memory, but Eraser can be set to overwrite the swap file when you do a shut-down and restart.

Unicode formatted text is just another set of binary numbers to Eraser, so it can erase them just as easily as any other file.

That said, some programs you might use can create cached versions of certain files in locations you aren't aware of. I just found a cache of files last night on my computer from a program I used once about 2 years ago. I only found it by doing a wildcard search on the whole drive for that kind of file type.
 
Thanx

Yeah, I thought it sounded funny when I heard it.
One guy said that, in order to wipe file slack and directory info on W2K, you had to wipe the entire drive freespace, and then defrag and wipe again, because W2K is so protective of its files' info that it will deny access to it.
Thanks.
 
Yes, the swap space is protected as long as windows is active. That is why it is a boot-time option in Eraser to wipe that space. It makes the shutdown process take a little longer, but that's about it. I just do one pass of pseudorandom data.

The freespace wipe is for overwriting the remnants of files that were deleted normally (by you or by programs using temp files that they delete). Defragging probably won't add much to the security aspect.
 
Eraser has an option to specifically overwrite the cluster tips. There is no way (or reason) for the operating system to protect those. It protects the swap space because it would be chaotic not to do so.

I have not verified through experimentation that Eraser *actually* overwrites cluster tips (a.k.a. slack space, file slack + RAM slack), but it sounds like a good thing to test.
 
Testing

Well, I have used the Rest2514 program after doing an Eraser run on a Drive, and it has never found anything.
I guess that's a kind of test.
 
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