eraser

Ran this program on my 2 Puters.
Windows XP Pro and Vista Business.
IMHO this program is nothing but trouble.
It is now OFF my Puters.
I had to Restore both Puters with Acronis TI
to get them to funtion again. Not all is lost,
as I now know that Acronis TI restores from an
external drive very well, in fact less than 15 minutes.
Thank God I had a backup......
Hope this msg is in the correct forum.

 

never had a problem with eraser.
What version did you use?
What where you trying to do?

 

works fine for me on two computers - one XP Home SP3, the other is Vista Home SP1

 

I think I had the latest version.
On the XP Puter I had the eraser set at 35.
It ran for over 24 hours and got to 62%
when I cancelled it. Then it wouldn't boot.
On the Vista Puter I had eraser set at 3.
It ran to 30% and hung. Then when I logged on
settings were messed up and the Icons on the desktop said the files were moved. In general just a mess.
Gave up and restored with Acronis and deleted
Eraser from my Puters.
If you have no problems with it, then I must
be doing something very wrong. The only way I would ever try it again is to do a backup just before running Eraser.
Thanks for the reply.

 

What version number please.
What task were you trying to do? Was it a freespace wipe?

That sounds like the Gutmann Method

Depending on HD size and number of HDs it could take 80+ hours with the gutmann Method. Most people use 1 pass of Pseudorandom Data.

Sorry to hear that.

1 pass of Pseudorandom Data is all thats necessary

 

I've used Eraser 5.7 on many PCs with no issues. I must admit though that I've never used the 35 pass method. It's overkill...

 

I use Eraser 5.6
Only once used the Guttmann (35 passes) for wiping free space. It took longer then 24 hours.
Now I just use 1 pass, don't see the need for more.

 

Thanks for the replies guys.
Since I have deleted the program from my Puter I
am not sure what version I was using. However I did download it from Sourceforge about a month ago. So it must be from V 5.7 to 5.86a.
There are several Eraser programs out there and
maybe the one I was using is the problem.
I was using the one by Heidi.
On the XP Puter I was using the Gutmanns method and a freespace wipe. On the Vista Puter it was also a freespace wipe but only 3.
This is a NEW program for me and I would be the
first one to admit maybe I don't know what I am doing.
After I hear the response to this message I think
my next step would be to download the latest Eraser Version again, do a fresh backup and try with the wipe free space set to 1.

 

May I suggest, don't go for the latest version. There are some discussions here at wilders about it, and for what I know, version 5.6 was the last "good" one. At least thats what I understood sometime ago and that's why I haven't upgraded to later versions.

If anyone can confirm this please...

 

Thanks again for the replies.
I went up on the Heidi.ie site and looked for versions of Eraser. The only one that I found that says it
works on Vista is V. 5.86a. I don't think that was
the one I had when I had my problems on the Vista
Puter. Doesn't explain the problems with the XP Puter though.

 

I not sure I know what your talking about as I use version 5.86a and have no real problem other than Eraser 5.86a erases slower than v5.6/5.7. But when ever you are unsure about a potentially critical problem you allways go to Eraser v5.6 .BTW 5.6 is really misslabled 5.7, search Heidi forums for old post http://bbs.heidi.ie/index.php?sid=e7978ff93ed0a34193b0821937e6b1f4 I am not sure they have the old old posts archived.

 

Here is the thread I was looking for:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=201699

Other resources here:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=219236

 

Now I am really scared to death.
This product being crapped up by an igotistical 18
year old that is to young to realize he doesn't know everything.
Maybe I'm reading the above posts and links incorrectly, but from what I can see the only version advertisied that works with VISTA is 5.86a from the heidi.ie site.
All others don't list Vista.

 

Well at least I'm getting a lot of practice Restoring
with Acronis TI.
I downloaded Eraser 5.86a. I ran it with a setting of one. It ran to 32% very fast and then started to do one item at a time about every 5 minutes. After about 30 minutes of this I cancelled the program.
Needless to say Windows Vista was crapped up.
I asked before but got no answer, Eraser 5.7 is not intended for Vista. So how can I use that one?

Has anyone got a suggestion for another free eraser that will clean up deleted items on a good
disk?

 

There are plenty of option for erasing programs, but can't remember now. Just do a search here on Wilders. Some of them should work on Vista...

 

Yes I did defrag just prior to running Eraser.
I have no idea where to even look for eraser
portable. If it's not compatible with Vista I
can't use it.

 

Thanks JRViejo,
Had a hard time finding any reference to it's use with Vista. Also am a little confused by the word portable. It will reside on my internal hard drive
and no where else. I guess that's ok. I hope the 18 year old turkey can't get his hands on this one....
Will give it a try today.
The only other one that I could find that would do what I want and was compatible with Vista is SecureErase. I haven't fooled with it yet.

 

The below indicates that Jetico's BCWipe is also Vista comptaible.

I use it myself and am very pleased with it.

 

Don't you hate those dumb 18 year olds? By the way, you spelled egotistical incorrectly - a mistake that an 18 year old would probably not make.

 

Ran eraser_portable_5.82_rev_3.paf.exe.
Passes set to one.
Ran very fast to 34% (most likely all my programs) then in programs that looked to be windows it processed one file about every 3 to 5 minutes. I cancelled after about 15 minutes as it looked like it would take 20 years to finish the disk.

A lot of files caused a message to appear asking if
I wanted to delete. I responded no but there must
be a setting that I could use to tell the program to respond no to all these programs.

I was able to reboot the system but when I clicked on a desktop icon I got a message that the file had been moved. At this point I did a restore with
Acronis TI.
I am at a loss for what to do.....