wipe unallocated disk space

[lnjr]

Hello,
I just installed the Acronis Disk Director and was reviewing the owners / users guide. According to the guide
4.1.13
Wiping unallocated hard disk space
PC hard disks can contain a substantial amount of confidential information. Often users forget that private information must be completely destroyed to avoid unauthorized access to it — simply deleting an old file is not sufficient.
Windows tools do not guarantee data destruction. Deleted files can be restored easily. Formatting and even deleting a partition leaves hard disk sector contents the same. Acronis Disk Director Suite offers a simple but reliable algorithm for wiping hard disk unallocated space.
If you need to wipe unallocated disk space:
1. Select a hard disk and unallocated space in the Acronis Disk Director Suite main window — Wipe unallocated space becomes available on the toolbar.
2. Select Disk 􀃆 Wipe or a similar item in the Operations sidebar list, or click Wipe the selected unallocated space on the toolbar.
3. In the Wipe Unallocated Space window, enter a number of disk passes (up to 99),
For information about the Acronis Disk Director Suitedata wiping algorithm see the commentary for 4.1.10 «Deleting a partition».
Hard disk
4. By clicking OK, you'll add a pending operation of unallocated disk space wiping.

Could someone tell me why the "wipe" icon on the top toolbar is greyed out?
In fact, Wipe, Clear and Create Partition are all greyed out. I also went to Disk on the top of the screen and the wipe is greyed out there as well.

This program came with Acronis True Image 2009 and I am running Windows Vista Home Premium.

Thanks!

[K0LO]

lnjr:

Welcome to the forum. I just took a look at my copy of DD, version 10, build 2160. The wipe icon remains greyed out until you select a block of unallocated space on the disk. To activate any of these functions you need to first select a disk or a partition on a disk by clicking on either the text list of partitions or on the graphic image of a partition at the bottom of the screen.

Here is an example. I first created a temporary block of unallocated space by resizing the Backup partition, then clicked on the unallocated space in the graphic image. Note that the "Wipe" icon in the toolbar is now active. You can also right-click on the unallocated space to see "Wipe" as a choice in the context menu:

208013

Hope this helps...

[lnjr]

Okay, from what you have said, I need to create a temporary block of unallocated space first. I thought that perhaps I could just wipe the entire area of the disk that has unallocated space available to it. I have a Windows Vista Laptop with Recovery (D) with a total of 11.94 gb of space (5.2 available) and Partition_1 (C) has 220.9 gb of space --- 28.48 gb used and the rest is free space.
I have attached the screen of what mine looks like when I open up DD

[K0LO]

lnjr:

Are you wanting to wipe the area inside your Vista partition that is currently unused? There is a slight difference in nomenclature here; Unused space is located inside of a partition and consists of sectors that do not belong to any files. Unallocated space is located outside of any partitions. The Acronis wipe function will only write zeros to unallocated space, or the clear function will delete a partition and write zeros to all of the sectors formerly belonging to the partition.

So if you want to write zeros to the unused space inside of one of your partitions then this isn't the tool to do that. I haven't gone looking for ways to do this but I'm sure that someone has written a utility for this purpose. You could start looking here (http://3d2f.com/tags/unused/sectors/).

[XIII]

I believe Heidi (http://www.heidi.ie/node/6) can help you.

[lnjr]

Thanks for the information. I just thought that perhaps it would wipe the empty area (unused / available) space in Partition C. I had heard that when you delete things that they aren't really deleted and that you need to wipe that part of the hard drive to really get rid of it. Maybe that was meant for the entire drive too. I do know that CCleaner has a Wipe Drive option that is supposed to just wipe the unused part of the drive.

I had just installed the program and haven't really had a chance to thoroughly go through the program or the Acronis True Image 2009 yet either. Hopefully, by next weekend I'll be able to do so (been a bit busy with mom in the hospital right now).

I did check out Heidi and that looks like what I was thinking. However, (sorry if this sounds stupid) how do I know if I need to download the erasersetup32.exe or the 64.exe version?

Thanks Again.

[lnjr]

Never mind about which version of Heidi to download, I figured it out.

Thanks Again!