The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Need help with the tool: Erarser

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by laptop4life, Jan 2, 2009.

  1. laptop4life

    laptop4life Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    25
    Messages:
    265
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Hi, im currently have a old laptop im wanting to sell to a friend with pre loaded software that i dont want to get rid of and i have some private documents, images ect. that i deleted and i em using eraser and im not sure how to use it. All i want to do is to permantlley remove deleted files. So if any one can tell me the steps to do so would be great.
     
  2. atbnet

    atbnet Notebook Prophet

    Reputations:
    5,868
    Messages:
    5,889
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    206
    I would recommend using DBAN.
     
  3. laptop4life

    laptop4life Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    25
    Messages:
    265
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    is that better and i need a free tool?
     
  4. atbnet

    atbnet Notebook Prophet

    Reputations:
    5,868
    Messages:
    5,889
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    206
    I think it is one of the better disk wiping programs out there. It is free too. http://www.dban.org/

    You can choose from writing zeros to the disk or a random write of data to ensure it cannot be recovered.
     
  5. laptop4life

    laptop4life Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    25
    Messages:
    265
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    all i wont to do is permantley remove deleted files. Does it do that?
     
  6. atbnet

    atbnet Notebook Prophet

    Reputations:
    5,868
    Messages:
    5,889
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    206
    Nevermind, I didn't read entirely that well. Now that they have already been deleted you would need to run defrag to write over the space the files originally took up. You would have had to run a shredder program on the files before you deleted them as it would write random data to the space the files occupied.
     
  7. laptop4life

    laptop4life Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    25
    Messages:
    265
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    thats what eraser does, but i dont know how to use it.
     
  8. qhn

    qhn Notebook User

    Reputations:
    1,654
    Messages:
    5,955
    Likes Received:
    1
    Trophy Points:
    205
    Simplest and purest - get another hard drive. 5 min job on almost all laptops to swap. Free software is no good when one really wants to wipe out hard drive info.

    see here for Eraser FAQ:
    http://heidi.ie/eraser/faq.php

    cheers...