Heidi.ie's Eraser 5.7 - hard drive eraser.

[stan412]

Hi,

I was wondering if you guys are familiar and/or have used this program to completely wipe your hard drives.
They tout their program as being better than retail programs despite being free, but I want to be convinced that this prgram does what it does, or else I'll just go with retail ones.

That said, for you guys that have used this program--first of all, is it easy to use?
Secondly, on the website, it mentions a lot of info, but makes no mention of being able to wipe External hard drives, be it usb, firewire, or eSata port.
I have external hard drives that I want to completely wipe, before copying other files...

As for you guys that might recommend retail ones, what are some good ones? I'm most familiar with the WipeDrive 3 software. Any recommendation would be welcome.

 

[edklite]

Stan aside from obvious why do you need to use something like this? are you just trying to zero out all sectors or are you hoping that once erased your data is not recoverable?

 

[stan412]

Hi,

maybe it sounds--uncommon.
but yes, I do want to make it unrecoverable, like a fresh new hard drive.
Sort of just like a preference, but also because I might want to replace the hard drive or start anew.

 

[edklite]

OK stan unless you defrag your drive 4 times a day for a month or burn the HDD your data is recoverable, don't listen to any of these cleaners.

so if you want to reinstall on it you can use your windows CD to format drive.

if you wanna zero out sectors and don't have or want to use windows CD then try kill disk and remember none of these really make your data unrecoverable

 

[stan412]

So, I want to make sure if an external hard drive can be detected if I shut down Windows and rebooted in DOS mode. If I want to clean the Windows swap files, I would need to reboot to DOS, but how would DOS read a USB/FireWire/eSATA plugged in drive?

Also, are there users that have reported this program to work under Windows Server 2003? I have Enterprise Edition, R2 on one of my computers...
Shouldn't it work under Windows if I click on the program's Properties and check the "Run in compatibility with (Windows XP)"? But how would it work under WS 2003's DOS (if it's different from WinXP's DOS, that is)-- how do I go to DOS, since there is no "restart to DOS mode" on the shutdown menu?

 

[edklite]

stan I'm not sure how server 2003 works but kill disk has a bootable floppy if you read the post in that link, you can make a bootable floppy or cd

in xp to get to dos you have to boot from xp cd and go to recovery console that is as close to dos you gonna come on xp start>run>cmd will open a dos window on desktop but you won't be able to do anything to your main drive from that window

 

[taylorM12]

Hmmmm You said that even secure wipes can be recovered. Care to elaborate? I have never seen a proven case of data recovery that could do what you said.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Post is 5 years old.