Wiping large areas of unused space

L

lucid

New Member
I have a question in regard to wiping unused space. When I use the 35-pass wipe it can take many hours. So if I need to stop Eraser for any reason I have to start the wipe all over if it has not finished. In practicality, this means I can never 35-pass wipe a very large area. However, I recently discovered that if explorer crashes or if I power down without quitting that the Eraser temp files are still intact and have not been deleted. This is handy as I can then start erasing unused space from where I left off. Is there any "convenient" way to stop eraser and leave the eraser wipe temp files intact? I have tried ending the eraser process in Task Manager but eraser keeps right on trucking right along even though it is missing from the TM. Thanks.
 
Hi,

After reading some other posts, I discovered that these days 35-pass isn't really necessary. But, still it can take 2+ hours to 1-pass wipe the free space of some of my large drives. I would like to do a multiple 7-pass wipe on occasion. So, if there is a convenient way to stop Eraser and keep the Eraser temp files, let me know. That way I can avoid starting all over again if I have to stop E for some reason.

Thanks,
lucid
 
Why not fill up some of the free space you have with ballast files such as empty Truecrypt volumes etc so the amount of free space is reduced. When you need more space delete one of your ballast volumes.

Also 7 passes is overkill :wink: . 1, or for the very paranoid 2 passes with random data is enough.
 
Just want to confirm something: If I create a Truecrypt volume to fill space, the formerly unused space is now used by the Truecrypt volume and thus, whatever was on it (when it was unused space) cannot be recovered. Correct? Thanks
 
It's roughly analogous to using a one-pass pseudorandom erase, yes.
 
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