Solved Sanitizing & access denied to System Volume Information

[2wheels]

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?

 

[zigzag3143]

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.

 

[2wheels]

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.

 

[DMHolt57]

...see what you can do with this...

1. To see the space allocated and used for SVI:
- Open Command Prompt with “Run as Administrator” option
- Type in: vssadmin list shadowstorage
- You will see Used Space, Allocated Space and Maximum Space for SVI
2. To see the restore information stored therein:
- Use in the same console command: vssadmin list shadows
3. To resize the maximum allocated space:
- Type in command: vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=[here add the drive letter]: /For=[here add the drive letter]: /Maxsize=[here add the maximum size]
- E.g., vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=4GB
- You will see a prompt confirming resize done
- You can check the status again using the command discussed in point 1 above
4. Just to get rid of the space already consumed, but sticking to the same size of max-size as before:
- Do actions as per point 3 to set the max-size t, say, 1GB
- If you check now, most likely you’ll see that used space is now 0KB
- Do the resize again and set it back to what it was before
- Check your disk space availability in Windows Explorer, you should see the reclaim is done!

And have a look here...

http://www.sevenforums.com/performa...e-how-delete-system-volume-information-d.html

 

[Corazon]

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.

 

[2wheels]

Corazon reply

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.

 

[2wheels]

Update to DBAN errors

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.

 

[2wheels]

DBAN errors still exist

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.

 

[2wheels]

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.

 

[2wheels]

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

 

[2wheels]

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YIPPIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The media card reader was my culprit. What worked for me was disconnecting the media card reader from the motherboard. From what I read online, disabling the USB controller in the BIOS would not work. If I had not had a USB keyboard maybe it would have worked. Anyway, the light purple cable end in the lower right area of the motherboard was the card reader. It was connected to F_USB1. I finally figured it out by Googling a replacement card reader where I could see a color pic of the part (and cable). Dell's website would not tell me the connector location on the motherboard.

And just as I had read this morning when Googling my DBAN errors, the drive I want to wipe is literally the only thing listed. I had 4 other unknown entries all from the card reader.

DBAN is running now, I'll post back again when it finishes.

Thank you all, and I hope all this helps someone else out.

 

[Corazon]

Glad to hear it worked Thanks for keeping us posted...this will definitely help others who may have trouble with DBAN in the future.

 

[2wheels]

Success

DBAN ran sucsessfully. I am so happy. Thank you all for the help.

There is one other thing I read online that I tried and did not work for me, but I want to write about for others after me. I found the post on answers dot microsoft dot com. The post was by MattiEinars. Although it did not help my problems with Heidi Eraser or DBAN, someone might find the info useful. I saw a lot of posts stating the System Volume Information was from the Restore feature. This person gave DOS commands to remove the directories and files by changing their attributes. (F is the target drive below.)

C:\>F:
F:\>attrib -s -h /S /D
F:\>attrib -r /S /D
F:\>rd "System Volume Information" /S

In my case, when I was in DOS I only had a $RECYCLE.BIN folder off the root directory. I used the commands above along with other DOS commands to get rid of the folders and files. Again, this did not solve my problem but this information might help someone else trying to do something a bit different. The DOS commands did remove the files and folders where a DOS format, etc. would not remove them.