Using Eraser or SDelete

[ICIT2LOL]

Have been doing a bit of looking around at format v wiping a drive and cam across this How Do I Permanently Delete Files From My Hard Disk? | PCWorld now before I go heading off into the jungle has anyone ever used these softwares and just how good are they?

I am asking because I know just deleting files folders etc doesn't actually get rid of them and these looked like I could clear a fair bit of space on my drive.

Any thoughts please.

 

[Golden]

None of these give you any more free space, than had you deleted them normally. All they do is make the deleted files unrecoverable. All you need is SDelete.

More background info and command line example:
Free Utility: SDelete

Option to insert it into Explorer context menu:
Permanently Delete - Add to Context Menu

 

[Callender]

I've been using sDelete for a long time. However I don't use it from the context menu. I just use it to wipe free space after deleting files and I only wipe free space every month or so. If you want examples of usage here's a screenshot from RunCommand (I use RunCommand to store handy command lines)

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C:\Windows\System32\sdelete -p 1 -z -c C:

The above launches sDelete

-c Clean free space.
-p (no. of passes) Specifies number of overwrite passes (default is 1).
-z Zero free space (good for virtual disk optimization).

Like Golden says those utilities mentioned just securely delete files so they can't be recovered. You'd need to decide which files need secure deletion.

However if free space is wiped there's not really any need to worry about secure deletion. One pass with sDelete and files cannot be recovered.

For file and folder secure deletion on demand I've always used this: Blank And Secure 4.23 Portable tool to securely delete the data.

When you say just deleting files and folders doesn't get rid of them - actually it does, unless you allow deletion to your recycle bin. Once deleted space is marked as free.

These utilities mentioned are just a way to prevent file recovery using recovery software.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Thanks Colin and Callender so I have it correct SDelete will not actually remove the left over part of the file or folder?

I did see an analogy that described deleting say a file is like having a book and deleting that file was akin to tearing off the title page - the rest of the book was still there?

So if using SDelete is not going to give me more space then probably best left at the current status of just deleting normally.

The other thing I am not sure is of any use use is the wiping of free space on a drive it to me sounds a bit of a nonsense to wipe a space on a drive that has nothing on it

But if you think I have missed something I would appreciate any advice.

 

[Callender]

As far as I know if you delete files they're deleted and the space is marked as free. The file header gets deleted so it can't be seen or found when using file explorer. The file still exists though and can be recovered using recovery software. It's not taking up space as the space is now free to be used. Eventually another file will overwrite that free space. Wiping free space or securely deleting files is just a way of making files unrecoverable or difficult to recover if anyone gets physical access to your machine.

 

[Golden]

The other thing I am not sure is of any use use is the wiping of free space on a drive it to me sounds a bit of a nonsense to wipe a space on a drive that has nothing on it

But if you think I have missed something I would appreciate any advice.

Free disk space could be a partition which has never had a file written to it.....or.....Free disk space could be a partition that appears to be empty, but in fact had files which were deleted from it at some point in the past. It depends what you mean by "free disk space"

By wiping free disk space you are in effect performing a secure delete on any previously deleted files after the fact, so to speak.

I wasn't aware SDelete could wipe free disk space. For wiping free disk space, I use the Cipher Windows command line tool. You could use either.

Cipher tutorial:
Cipher Command - Overwrite Deleted Data in Windows

 

[Barman58]

What you have to be aware of is that the only way to securely "clean" old data from a hard disk is by total destruction of the physical hardware, you need to actually remove the platters (or chips in the case of SSD), and totally destroy them. There are as far as I am aware no wiping software that will be secure from one of the TLA's, (US Three Letter Agencies), or other professional data recovery agencies.

The best you can look to do is clean to a level to prevent the rest of us from reading your private musings, (or porn collection ).

You need to look for a system that writes random data to every part of the disk and repeats this a number of times.

A lot of available software will merely write a single string of zeros Once to the whole disk, this sounds safe but is not as there are simple recovery algorithms that can reverse this - Back in the 1980's I have an incident that a company director formatted his system twice or three times "accidentally" - with the technology available at that time I managed to recover almost 100% of the data on the disk without issue, the only data that I lost was that in use at the time of the forced format, basically the temp files used by the word processor.

If you are thinking of selling on a system and wish to clear all data, with the current cost of Hardware I would be tempted to buy a basic HDD and fit it into the hardware before sale

 

[Layback Bear]

Just my thoughts.

If one wants to be perfectly sure that no data can be retrieve from a old drive, Nigel has the best idea. Physically destroy the drive.

Years ago I bought Driver Scrubbe 2.
You could select from 1 pass on a drive and up to 7 passes. If one wanted even better one could select Gutmann's wipe. A 500 GB drive would take for ever to complete even 3 layers of wiping. Plus the wear and tear on the drive doing all these wipes wasn't worth it.

Today I just use P/W Mini Tool. It does more than enough clean wipe to meet my needs.

You can also use Ccleaner and do from 1 to 35 passes to wipe a drive.

I know I don't have any thing on a drive that would need more than 1 pass to wipe.

So Using Eraser or SDelete or another program really doesn't matter.
Pick a program and use it. Unless one is worried about some government agency doing a search you should be okay.

Jack

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok I have got the gist of it now so say for example I fill the drive with new info/data the old files will be overwritten and sort of non recoverable excepting that Nigel has recovered data from drive that have been wiped so in theory the old stuff could be recovered.

Now I usually use clean, clean all (if I am feeling super meticulous) and PW wipe feature. Failing that I use a new drive. So I am assuming stuff like Dariks Nuke stuff and the like are really not what they are cracked up to be.

Having said all that I don't have much stuff on my drives that would interest many people my main concern is that if I am going to reuse a drive that it is clean of the previous install as I really am not a fan of just formatting to do the clean up job. Maybe I am wrong but it is something I do advise members in the forum who are not familiar with such stuff to do the same.

So I would like to know what anyone advises in that scenario??

 

[lehnerus2000]

Ok I have got the gist of it now so say for example I fill the drive with new info/data the old files will be overwritten and sort of non recoverable excepting that Nigel has recovered data from drive that have been wiped so in theory the old stuff could be recovered.

My understanding is that:

• Writing data creates a magnetic field that is wider than the Read Track
• Mechanical systems vibrate/wobble (i.e. the HDD Platters and Read/Write Arm)
• Temperature changes cause expansion and/or contraction

This means that the data is also written to areas outside of the Read Track.
It also means that writing new data to the track won't guarantee a perfect overwrite of the old data.
The picture below assumes perfect alignment (i.e. no wobble).

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Special equipment can then be used read data from outside the standard Read Track position.
I read articles that have claimed that it is possible to recover data that has been overwritten 100 times.

Obviously solid state storage doesn't suffer from HDD Platter and/or Read/Write Arm issues.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yes mate I guess nothing is really that safe anymore because of the tech stuff you have quoted. I suppose one can just hope a clean / wipe does a reasonably good job at stopping the previous install from corrupting the next one as I mentioned I am not a fan of simple formatting.

 

[Golden]

Having said all that I don't have much stuff on my drives that would interest many people my main concern is that if I am going to reuse a drive that it is clean of the previous install as I really am not a fan of just formatting to do the clean up job. Maybe I am wrong but it is something I do advise members in the forum who are not familiar with such stuff to do the same.

So I would like to know what anyone advises in that scenario??

If the intention is to reuse the drive yourself, a Clean All is perfectly OK - nothing else is required.

If the intention is to give the drive away or sell it, and it didn't have sensitive information : use Cipher or SDelete.

If it had sensitive information, physically destroy it.

Whilst its relatively easy to recover information from a drive that has been formatted, it's considerably more work for a drive that that has had a cleaning/wiping algorithm run over it. Just like Dariks Nuke and Boot, Eraser and others, both SDelete and Cipher write random data across the disk in a number of passes - the time and effort required to reverse all of that is considerable. The only people prepared to do that, need to have some compelling reason for it ie. security agencies. And they only do that when its worth their time and effort.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Thanks Colin that is just what I do myself not having anything worth while on my drives I just like to know the previous install has been fairly well wiped off so not leaving much if anything behind from the previous install.

I do in the forum when I have been on threads that have bad installs always ask how the drive was prepared before the member re installs the OS (any OS) and almost every time they have just formatted a practice that I mentioned I don't particularly like preferring to clean the drive, and in any case both methods are reasonably quick to do.

I am not sure if I should be doing that so what would you advise them to do before a clean install?

 

[Callender]

I know we don't like to direct users off this site but this article explains better than I can about secure file deletion.

How to: Delete Your Data Securely on Windows

See sections on SSD's.

Also note: I personally use and currently have installed:

Ccleaner + CCEnhancer
Bleachbit
SystemNinja
PrivaZer
Nirsoft CleanAfterMe
ShellBag Analyzer & Cleaner
JPG Cleaner
Blank & Secure
sDelete

However just going ahead and running a full cleanup with all settings checked could lead to problems which are hard to undo.

Quotes from another thread:

I just like to attempt to understand how to permanently delete stuff. When I first started using Windows 7 it was a learning process and I seemed to need to reinstall Windows on a fairly regular basis due to overzealous tweaking/ cleaning. I do like to run any free file recovery software that I find just to see what it can uncover. I don't have anything much to hide but there have been certain documents stored on my machine that if recovered could be used in identity fraud or to transfer money from my bank account.

I remember some years ago that I found evidence that my machine had been hacked and all my documents had been uploaded to who knows where in a zip file all without any sign of anything amiss!

Partitions puzzle

EDIT: If you read that article it also mentions Bleachbit.

BleachBit can wipe the traces Internet Explorer leaves behind using the Internet Explorer preset (however BleachBit cannot wipe traces from any other browser).

Actually that's not correct. If you download winapp2.ini it will add other browsers cleanup.

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Also if you trim winapp2.ini in CCEnhancer you can just copy and paste it into other cleaners but my preference for other cleaners is to do a full scan and inspect results removing anything that actually needs to be kept from the detections before running a cleanup.

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winapp2.ini in Ccleaner is trimmed in the screenshot.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Thanks Callender that was a good read and I also went through the Ask Ars article too I found the comment at the end of it really quite witty

And finally, lest we forget, there are many more violent options if you don't intend to reuse the drive. Pulverization and pyrotechnics are both quite reliable.

Well the SSD info was really an eye opener for me and I suppose for me it raises the question as to whether I should be encrypting the drive I use - not that I have anything to hide apart from my stored passwords etc.

As for what we advise members to do and I speak of those who admit to being not very literate with a machines hard or software, I am no longer comfortable with what I have been putting out there. For myself I am happy to clean a drive instead of just a format only because I can and do have the resources and funds to replace any drive that I may wreck.

Having said that according to this Wear leveling - Wikipedia the wear leveling depends (if I am reading it right) on what type of flash memory is being used ie if it is a SSD or stick - static or dynamic wear leveling. Plus I have seen in adverts for SSD's the number of read/write cycles that are available and by that I think it means the rate of wear to the different blocks. Whether the companies quoting those cycles in the millions of (cycles) is or may be a point of appeal (sales prompt) to the buyer and in reality not quite correct let's say.

I guess in the long run for an average user like myself you would be pushed to actually wear a drive out say if it were 250GB or more and I can understand that heavy gamers or servers would be more likely to wear the drives to useless. But I stand to be corrected on anything I have typed up here.

Anyway I shall look at some of those softwares you have on board because I have recently been looking at testing some softwares from the Gizmo site before using them and making myself a diagnostic USB stick I can use on families machines - or my own

 

[Callender]

RE: Your problem with Ccleaner and CCEnhancer.

If you don't trim the winapp2.ini file before running CCleaner it will become very sluggish. It should still work though!

However if for some reason Ccleaner hangs - end process via task manager. Relaunch CCEnhancer and select option to trim winapp.ini the download latest definitions.

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Once update is complete choose option to run Ccleaner but only select Analyze and check the results.

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Items in the left pane with an asterisk (*) have been added by CcEnhancer.

I reckon you might need to disable any Ccleaner real time monitoring before updating. Can't say for sure because I don't use Ccleaner real time monitoring.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok mate I will give it another try I did see that stuff about the winapp2.ini file when I got the Enhancer download up but thought that as clicking on it didn't do anything it would do whatever with it by default. So that is my mistake I guess.

The CCleaner actually stopped dead in the water and the Analyse was "greyed out" so to speak when I installed the Enhancer hence my resorting to a system restore.

 

[Callender]

Well if you update the winapp2.ini file using CCEnhancer you really need to select the trim option first. Then it only loads cleaners that are needed for your specific machine. Otherwise it will load a huge list of everything thats included in the default winapp2.ini file.

You can directly download it and view it with your text editor from here:

Downloads - Winapp2.com

If you compare contents and file size with a trimmed winapp2.ini file you will see a huge difference. The lag in Cccleaner is because it's checking every entry in the file and it might take 10 minutes or more before the program starts responding. With a trimmed winapp2.ini file it should only take seconds to load the results.

It's much easier to use the trim function in CCEnhancer that using the batch file trim method. I've used both.

Other than that if you still get problems - I remember having a problem some time ago with Ccleaner hanging and the fix was to fully uninstall it then download and install a fresh copy. I think just applying updates straight over the top of the old version can eventually lead to problems.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hmm Callender am in a right pickle here I have tried just about everything and still am getting the "greyed out" Analyse in CCleaner when installing Enhancer.

Now I am assuming I am doing something really quite wrong here and the ini file is not being shown in Windows / Program files / CCleaner / search for that ini file - no results.

Now I saw you are using some software called Swift Search and I went to download it and my Kaspersky is bouncing it as possible malware included so I am at a loss now.

 

[Callender]

Note: Avoid these options specifically: