I've been going 15 rounds with FDISR 205

I recently did a fresh install of my whole system and rebuilt all my snapshots. However, I tried to use the new secure delete program off the ultimate boot disk. When I loaded it up and tried to delete my hard drive the program wouldn't delete because it couldn't get past the bios safety settings and said ERROR. I've noticed that there is an update that tries to get around this bios block but you have to make your own bootable cd and then put this program on it. I couldn't make an el torrito bootable cd so I fell back on to using DBAN. So after a normal format with this DBAN I did a normal install of my system blah blah blah. Everything went fine.

The problem started as best to my recollection with the introduction of spyware terminator to my arsenal. After that HIPS program my copy/update can't delete programs or install from an archive without errors. The 1st snapshot I put spyware terminator on and backedup to archive went without error. I even had spyware terminator turned off for the procedure to make sure that this sort of thing didn't happen. Then wouldn't you know it I decided I didn't want that snapshot and I tried to erase it the snapshot from another snapshot. 2 errors. HMMMPF. Well what do you do when an ERASE SNAPSHOT has 2 errors after it completes? Does that mean there are 2 files or 2 somethings that are just sitting there unclaimed and without a snapshot to belong to? I thought, no problem I'll just defrag with perfect disk 8. Defrag went fine. I thought that should take of it right? I don't know what perfect disk 8 did with those 2 errors. I'm hoping it allocated the space for overwrite.

So, I go to just recreate a whole new snapshot from the one I made when I originally backed up a snapshot with the newly installed spyware terminator program. This new install of a snapshot from an offline archive completed with 2 errors AGAIN! &^%#@#$%(&!!!!!!! Ok well I'll just redo that copy update again. NO REBOOT. Just went right back to the archive and selected it again and did a copy/update from that offline archive source to the destination snapshot with the 2 errorson it hoping it would just fix the 2 errors. WRONG. GRRRRRRRRRR. Ok so I tried a different archive snapshot. StILL 2 errors. WHAT? Ok now I was a bit panickd. I tried my virgin archive that has NOTHING on it. Still errors. Geeez.

OK one last thing I'll try is to copy update from a different snapshot (I had 3 snapshots to choose from) that is on the disk and not from an offline archive. This worked! Whew. Ok but why don't my offline archives solve this? NONE of my archives reported having an error when I created them. Its obvious when then do. I check.

So now I've got a couple of observations after going through all this. I always try to defrag with perfect disk 8 before and after I create a snapshot. However, when I do this I ask myself, SHOULD I reboot after I defrag or can I go straight into creating a new snapshot without the reboot? My experience has been that it's safer to reboot after a defrag then install a new snapsot. This helped when I was trying to be super careful how I was trying to create a snapshot. Do you all reboot after defragging before creating a new snapshot?

This all started by me trying to make spyware terminator and sandboxie 322 play nice together. Which they do now as long as I don't try to fix a problem by copy/update from an offline archive sort of like how the freeze function would work. But this is unacceptable to not be able to use offline archives. That's it's greatest feature.

So my thoughts are these three. One- don't use spyware terminator. Two- could that secure erase program have caused some sort of permanent disk error? I remember someone from a disk manufacturer stating that it sets the bit wrong. (Found this out AFTER I had problems). But what does that mean? Did I accidently reset some important "bit" that renders my snapshots or archives vulnerable to errors? Three, what do you do with a snapshot that won't erase fully and gets errors during the erase snapshot attempt? I've got a headache.

 

I had to turn on javascript etc to be able to edit the above post since I orignally copied and pasted it but the paragraphs didn't take. Hope you can read it now. I'm stumped and hope i don't have to do some drastic reformat. I've since downloaded my hard drive manufacturers erase utility hoping it will be better than dban but my suspicions are that this is a spyware terminator caused error. FDISR and this program just don't get along.

 

I held off a long time before committing myself to my own suspicions on one of the versions of Spyware Terminator after installing it and it jumped over to my ARCHIVES partition and proceeded to do a terrible number on them. This was no fluke! I used ST before in earlier versions with no problems but as the other disc was GRINDING/THRASHING away while ST was supposedly building it's database, it got too much for me and i immediately out of panic pulled the cable off the other disk and the activity & noise stopped. I did not command the app to build a database of that other partition without my permission, especially one i kept FD-ISR archives in. Needless to say i had to rebuild that entire partition on that disk again because the archives were corrupted.

I kept quiet about it not wanting to raise undo or unfair suspicions on that product since many have no problems with it, and neither did i untill an updated version was released that i installed and got those results.

Be careful with those. Read up on them carefully line for line.

I used HDDERASE from a plastic floppy to test it out and aborted it before finished and it Locked me out of the drive untill (As Per Instructions) i re-ran the floppy again and chose the full secure erase method where afterwards it released the Lock when done. I later found the password.

I suspect the program you used wasn't this one but there is a detailed help guide for it.

http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseReadMe.txt

 

Hey Easter,

Yes that's the one I used, HDDErase. But the one that comes on the ultimate boot cd is an old one and it couldn't get past my bios lock when I booted up and ran it. It said error. I'm hoping that "error" didn't set some kind of strange "bit" that alters something. I don't know. I doubt it since the program was unable to run. Seems the word is out about that HDDErase program and all the manufacturers put in place blocks against it. I have a locking function built into my hard drive but I didn't have it on. Nor did I have any of my bios passwords or admin locks on so not entirely sure why the erase didn't work other than to think that the vendor blocks ALL access to this old version of HDDErase. Supposedly the newest version can get around a bios lock.

However at that moment of erasing my hard drive I didn't have the means of making a bootable cd with the newest version on it and had to opt for the old one on the ultimate boot cd. How does that newest version of HDDErase get around the bios lock? I'd love to be able to use it but I'm unnerved that such a program exists that is able to bypass security so easily. What do you make of that?

Did you make a bootable cd or did you make just the diskette and boot from a floppy drive?

 

I formatted a plastic floppy in XP Pro with MS-DOS Start Up Disk and added the hdderase program as instructed. It worked fine after i learned to let it finish but it's also newer than that older version and may be why you had difficulty with it.

The ST issue is another thing altogether, i doubt they had many users experience or reproduce my problem but that ended it for me.

Any security app like that which fudges up FD-ISR and proves some incompatibility with it is shown the way straight to the erase bin, as in ERASER.