Sanitizing & access denied to System Volume Information

2wheels said:

I am ready to pull my hair out here! I can't wait for help.

I am trying to use Heidi Eraser ver. 6.0.8.2273 to sanitize a small (80 GB HDD) secondary drive. I receive the following error message "Files in E:\System Volume Information did not have its cluster tips erased because of the following error: Access to the path 'E:\System Volume Information' is denied."

PC is a Dell studio XPS 8100 -- Dell - Studio XPS 8100 Desktop / Intel® Core™ i7 Processor / 8GB Memory / 1.5TB Hard Drive - SX8100-2777NBC) -- running Windows 7 Home SP1 with Webroot (anti-virus). The 80 GB drive is a second drive added to the system.

I am running Heidi Eraser from the Administrator account (full rights). I have System Restore turned off on this secondary HDD. I turned off Webroot. I formatted the drive through DOS, and I am still receiving this error message when trying to erase. Oh, and in Heidi Eraser I do have the option selected to... Erase Cluster Tips.

What am I missing please?

System volume information is owned by the user group "system" Even admins dont have rights to it. Only way I can think of is to take ownership of it (perhaps in DOS) from another OS or DVD.

That may make the HD unusable.

It is a non-bootable drive. It probably did have an OS installed earlier in its life.

Is it this eraser running in Windows that is causing me this problem? I ask because when I have erased in the past I have never had this problem using say DBAN (via a bootable floppy). I can't get DBAN to run either though this time.

Thank you for the help BTW.

DBAN is designed to completely wipe a drive clean, including the MBR, partition info and any and all filesystems on it. Any drive wiped in this manner must be completely reinitialized through Windows (a new MBR written) if new partitions are to be created and formatted on it.

What you're doing with Eraser is just wiping the unused space within a formatted partition. This isn't the same as truly wiping the HD completely.

You might try Active KillDisk instead which works similarly to DBAN. The free version of KillDisk will wipe the HD clean with a single pass of zero-filling (the paid version offers other, more secure wiping modes).

Erase hard drive by Active@ KillDisk. Low Level Format.

The same result can be achieved by using diskpart and running the command clean all. This works both from within your running Windows system (if it isn't installed on the HD you want to wipe) or from the Windows setup DVD through the command prompt.

If you merely want to wipe unused disk space, you can use a partition manager such as Easeus Partition Master Home Edition or Partition Wizard to wipe unformatted partitions or wipe unpartitioned space on the HD.

Tnere's no need to actually format a partition and then wipe the filesystem on that partition.

Thank you. Heidi Eraser is not what I want then. I need to figure out why DBAN is erroring out.

When I try to run DBAN ver. 2.2.6 in interactive mode, I get the following message in part. DBAN finished with non-fatal error. Check the log for more information. ERROR /dev/sdf (process crash), ERROR /dev/sdc (process crash), ERROR /dev/sdd (process crash), ERROR /dev/sdb (process crash), ERROR /dev/sda (process crash).

I read on DBAN's website that often times errors are from burning the ISO. I have not figured out where the log (referred to above) is located.

Anyone have any ideas as to whether my ISO is bad or what?

Thank you all.

I just Googled the DBAN errors after not finding answers on DBAN's website. Seems I am not alone though from DBAN's forum. Users are stating to disconnect or disable all other internal or external drives other than the one I want to sanitize. Anything the system sees as a drive e.g. a card reader. So, I'll be back to report after I try this.

Still getting the same errors. I must not have something disconnected, but I do not know what. Any ideas? I disconnected the HDD that came with the system. HDMI cable to TV disconnected. USB keyboard still connnected. USB mouse disconnected. Optical drive still connected. I am thinking something USB is still causing the problem, but of course I do not really know. I do not think the system has a card reader, but I'll check into that next. Camera and Garmin are disconnected. All unused USB cable are disconnected.

Yes, there is a media card reader (internal). I have no idea how to disable it. I'm hoping for a way through the BIOS??? I do not have a motherboard map, and even if I did I bet it is on the bottom. If so, that area is not readily accessible.

Dell's website points here -- Documentation -- for disconnecting the media card reader. Which # though? Anyone???