Eraser/Shredder for Win7 (Solid State HD)

Titanomachy · 22 Mar 2011

Hi all, I was using Eraser and it seemed to work just fine on my laptop but there seem to be issues using it on my gaming PC. I built the PC from scratch (honestly, I'm still amazed every single time it boots up successfully) and went for Solid State Memory, as it's a gaming PC. I don't know if it's that, or some other issue, but the erase all unused disk space option in Eraser won't function. I can target and erase individual files, but I want to use the function that shreds the whole of the unused disk (although it's obviously not a disk). Any help is much appreciated.Titanomachy ps. the paperclip icon for attaching files is disabled, for some reason, which is why no dxdiag.

Golden · 23 Mar 2011

Hi Titan,

Do you mean a solid state drive? What make of SSD is it?

Regards,
Golden

Titanomachy · 24 Mar 2011

Hi Golden, thanks for the response,

Yes SSD, It's: OCZ-VERTEX2 ATA 120Gig.

Regards,

Titanomachy

Golden · 24 Mar 2011

Mmm....you dont really need to erase unused space on an SSD if I understand its architecture correctly? Do you have an overiding reason for wanting to do that?

Regards,
Golden

Titanomachy · 24 Mar 2011

Yes, I have some business documents that I want to ensure are unrecoverable.

Regards,
Titanomachy

Titanomachy · 24 Mar 2011

Experts warn about SSD security risks | MyCE – My Consumer Electronics

Ok so it seems that there is a hardware issue with shredding on a SSD. Anyone know of any shred software which would be compatible with my OCZ-VERTEX2 ATA SSD?

Thanks

Titanomachy

Golden · 25 Mar 2011

Hi,

You could try the Drive Wiper facility in CCleaner. It is capable of securely wiping free disk space.

Regards,
Golden

Titanomachy · 26 Mar 2011

Thanks Golden,

Is it possible to get that software for free? Also, is there a tutorial someone could point me to on formatting my drive, I don't really know anything about formatting and what it does, do you have to reinstall your OS when you reformat?

Titanomachy.

Golden · 26 Mar 2011

Hi,

CCleaner is completely free - it costs nothing. Here is the download link:

http://www.piriform.com/download

Yes, when you reformat your system drive, you need to reinstall the OS and all the programs that were on that disk. You should backup any data/music/photo's etc to an external USB device before you format such drive. You usually reformat the disk if you plan to reinstall Windows.

Here are a few tutorials you can read through:

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

Clean Install Windows 7

Post back here if you need more help. If you tell us why you are considering reformatting your disk, we can possibly offer alternate methods if we can understand what you are trying to achieve.

Regards,
Golden

Heretikos · 16 Jun 2012

Ummmm... Using drive wiper from ccleaner or other programs isn't the best idea. I posted a question about this because it doesn't make sense. I'm not all techy, but SSD's are made in such a way wiping them appears pointless and causing way more writes to your limited amount on the SSD. I'm not sure on this, I'm still trying to figure it out. I just wanted to say, you might want to learn more about how free space on a SSD is used and check it out before running any free space wiper. That's just my suggestion though. I ran a drive wipe on my SSD (with a 2nd HDD) and then I remembered how SSD's don't really save old deleted files to be re-written. Now I'm trying to figure out if this IS really something that's ok, because reading about TRIM and SSD's and their free space, this seems like it might be a problem.