Disk Wiper does not wipe freespace

jv16

Rationalmind wrote
Excellent update! I am glad to confirm that in v1.5.2.336, Disk Wiper works great at amazing speed! Thanks much for fixing that great feature!!

Actually, the bug is not yet fixed because I haven't yet been able to find anything to fix. But I will.

stever

In my post about QA and unit testing I never implied that software is ever bug free. I live in the real world.

What I did mean is that when a piece of software obvously fails to perform its primary function on a generic Windows XP system, that's not the sort of bug easily missed in tested software. This is not a UI bug or a subtle error. It's a case where the software accepts a request and reports successful completion, but does not do what it claimed.

It is also completely understandable that a small operation doesn't have time to offer every feature, test every detail, and fix every bug immediately. I just question whether this particular part of jv16 power tools was ready for release.

jv16

Steve R wrote

What I did mean is that when a piece of software obvously fails to perform its primary function on a generic Windows XP system, that's not the sort of bug easily missed in tested software.

The feature works perfectly under the two test systems I tried it in order to be able to duplicate the problem, and the feature isn't really "a primary function".

The jv16 PT's main window contains the tools in the order of relevance to the product, thus removing software, managing and cleaning the registry are the product's primary functions, the history, cookie and automation features are the least-primary functions.

But the bug will be fixed, as soon as I find it.

tullik

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jv16

I'm quite sure I have now found the root cause of the problem.

If I am right, the Disk Wiper works 100% correctly if the drive of which free space you are trying to wipe has less that 2 GB of free space. For drives with more than 2 GB of free space the operation fails.

This bug is now fixed, the next released version contains the fix.

bonze

Try Wiping a bare drive formating it then trying a file rescue program to se if you recover any data. Fill drive with known data delete 1/2 of known data (or so) then wipe free space and try to recove the amount of data you deleted. be sure to empty the recycle bin before beginning any wipe operation.

Bonze :

bonze

I have used disk wipe utilities in the past and there is no way this wipe free space utility works.

I just tried to wipe free space on 3 drives over 30GB of free space and the task was done in less than 3 minutes.

Now as I remember to wipe a disk is to replace all deleted data with 1s or 0s or other hex values to overwrite the existing values.

I have a 2.8GHZ Intel Prescott and 4 Serial ATA Drives but even Norton Freespace wipe takes nearly 1 hour to perform a simple freespace wipe on the smallest of my drives. I am not talking DOD standards here (although I wish JV16PT would offer this solution).

How about it Leo what is going on here? The proof is in the pudding. Are you just putting a fancy icon in your interface and advertising this great new feature or is there really something going on here?

Exactly what is filling my free space to make it wiped and How is it doing it faster than my hard drive can accept data?

Bonze :

jv16

Bonze: As discussed in the thread above, the free disk drive wiping doesn't work properly in the current version of jv16 PowerTools. However, the bug is already located and fixed, the next released version will contain the fix.

And the PowerTools does support configuring the way the disk wiping works, you can define the number of times the data is written over from the Settings window.

tullik

jv16 wrote
... However, the bug is already located and fixed, the next released version will contain the fix.

And the PowerTools does support configuring the way the disk wiping works, you can define the number of times the data is written over from the Settings window.

Given those settings and the amount of free space on the drive, one should then be able to calculate the approximate bytes to be written by Disk Wiper.

Correct?

And given the displayed write rate, the approximate completion time should also be determinable. Also correct?

Which leads to the subject of the progress bar. On my systems, it currently jumps to 50% at the start, then jumps to 100% at the end. Is this fixed also?

tullik

Duplicate removed.

lashiec

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redseujac

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tullik

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jv16

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tullik

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lashiec

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jv16

Lashiec wrote

The tool wrote about 7.6 GB, which is almost the capacity of my HDD. So no problems here for now.

Just to make it clear: When wiping the free space of the disk, the tool overwrites the free space many time. Therefore it could easily write more data than the total capacity of the HDD.

bonze

I've looked at the settings menu and there are only 3 choices wipe free space, wipe directories and files and wipe entire disk. there are not areas to setup the security of the wipe as you state in the earlier message below:

jv16 wrote:

... However, the bug is already located and fixed, the next released version will contain the fix.

And the PowerTools does support configuring the way the disk wiping works, you can define the number of times the data is written over from the Settings window.

Bonze 8)

tullik

The three choices you mention are in the Disk Wiper Tool "Settings" tab.

Jv16 refers to the "File wiping" tab in the "Settings" window (accessed from the main window "File" menu).

bonze

Thanks for the help. I will be looking forward to the next version.

In the future it would be nice if I would be able to choose the hex data to overwrite the free space with.

Thanks again. :)

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