UGH!

Reeeaaallll newbie here; nice to meet everyone!

I was trying to securely clean free space on my hard drive, C, but it erased half the hard drive and most of my Windows files before I caught it. (I run Windows XP.)

Anyone know what I did wrong? I went to My Computer, C, right clicked on CryptoSuite and then chose "Secure Clean free space on Drive C." Needless to say, I had a reinstall done after that dumb move.

I really want to secure wipe my free space but now I'm afraid to try it again. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you very much!!!

 

By accident, I did the same. Never happened again. The dialogues look the same if you're not paying attention. I had just imaged my drive, so I was lucky.

Nick

 

Well, thank you. I figure it had to have been me, but every time I go back and look at it I can't believe I did it. Oh well, live and learn.

Or maybe they could put up a red, flashing, warning screen in a 60 pt. font for blind people like me.

 

Well there is no way if you did the secure delete free space it would delete your drive. There is an issue with cleaning free space and system restore points (see the help file for more details), but nothing major will occur with a secure delete of the clean space. So I would suggest it would be a user fault.

I might make it so it does pop up asking to make sure you want to secure delete the drive, if it is the windows drive, or possibly any whole drive?

 

I was just joking about the blinking sign, but how about a hand that comes out of the computer screen and slaps you in the face?

What I probably did was hit the item right above it - secure delete. It's okay, though. I have all four Diamond CS programs, I just have to be more careful as I learn how to use them.

(What the heck. I cleaned the drive, that's for sure!)

 

Jason, maybe indeed something like "this is going to do .. this and this ... is this what you want, continue, if not get back change options ..." so people are once again confronted with the possible result before pressing the OK button.

 

Yes Jooske, something like that. Problem with that also is that people get used to clicking OK/YES twice in a row and forget to read the second message. It is still better than not having it though.

 

With a moving button they have to hunt after to click it?
If the first button is yes/ok and the other continue/back, to make it look different and they might get thinking, or a little sub-console in which two/three options have to be checked and not saved for a next time, with a default only real free space is wiped.