Software Forum

after erasing history with pseudorandom dat on my C: drive (system), any program that has to look for content in C, hangs: keeps searching for hours until the wanted file is found. I think the computers scans all random files before ending the retrieval and giving the file I looked for.
When I try to open content of C: in explorer, the computer is slowed down for hours until the search seems to be done. Even gettng out of explorer doesn't stop the computer from being slowed down.
Is this a known problem and what can be done about it?
I already tried other troubleshooting without success (spyware,malware,checkdisk,defragmentation,Ccleaner,erasing temp files, junkfiles,...)

Check how much free space is left on that drive, and email to support.

Hari, maybe you should consider to change way of work for wipe free space.

Dont know why it creates temp files.

There is one product on the market called Kill Disk, it has many features, one of them is
to wipe and eliminate all traces to.

But there is no temp files during the wipe and after the wipe
Also it is much faster than au wipe free space.

Long time ago i tested it,i have file recover tool, run au wipe free space (with pseudorandom data)
It takes to long, many temp files are created.

After wipe there is many "leftovers" (file recover tool with the deep scan turned on,found a many,many deleted files
who are still on that partition (C:/).

Kill disk has about 20 metods of wipe one of them is Us DOD 5220.22m (i know you have the same metthod in wipe)
But with kill disk there is no temp files during and after installation, Us Dod method is taking twice time lesser than au
with wipe free space (pseudorandom), what is dramatic difference

Us DOD 5220.22m metod in ace utilites, takes like forever, and you must be by computer to delete temp files during run,
so that windows dont crash of stays without free space.
Takes like about 3,4 hours on 20gb partition.

With kildisk i wipe all my (160gb hard) with Us DOD 5220.22m for a less time than au with that method on c: drive (20gb)
also it is important to say that this tool is not 1gb or something
main .exe files what is needed has about 2,3 mb.
and the dos version is about 200-300kb, so maybe you shoud consider to improve your wipe free space.

uzi69,

We will check the program you've mentioned.
Also, please let me know the program that you used, to recover files with 'thorough' scan.

sorry uzi 69 but killdisk gave freezing and is only usable after burning a CD and I cant... PCtools didn't work either...

nh.... did you read conversation between Hari and me?

I said that kill disk is good tool to take a peak because it dont creates temp files,etc,etc....
It was suggestion for improvement.It has nothing to do with your problem.

PC Tools is tool for recovering, as i mentioned and it has nothing to do with your either

p.s. why all the work zelstar?You have some serious issues with you hard drive and windows,
just format hard drives and put fresh windows.

I am using au couple of years, done that what are you talking about 100 times on windows xp,vista,win7
and have no problem, you have some bigger problems what is not related to au.

Wait Aneesh or Hari to reply

uzi69 wrote:...
After wipe there is many "leftovers" (file recover tool with the deep scan turned on,found a many,many deleted files
who are still on that partition (C:/)
....

By leftovers, you mean temp files created while wiping, right? Not any valid deleted file that once existed in that partition before wiping.

We can try optimizing the procedure to cut down the total time required. It's possible with a little tweaking and we're on top of that. :--|

Aneesh by "leftovers" I meant that after the psudoradnom wipe, I found with one recovery tool for example, movies, pictures, files that i deleted long time ago, on that drive who was wiped with au.
By that i meant that pseudorandom wipe takes to long, and there are traces after au wipe with pseudorandom, so it is not
good default method and speed.

That was just a comparison, because after us dod method (3 pass wipe) there is not anything to recover after wipe,even after deep scan, hard drive is like a new one, bought from the store.There is nothing on hardrive.
But wipe with au us dod method, takes 3-4 time longer that with some other tools, and it is creatinig temp files what is
not good

Umm, abandoning the wiping process in the middle could technically leave the untouched part suseptible to recovery. As long as you have enabled 'Directory Entries' + 'Free space', you won't have anything left to recover no matter what method you choose. That is ofcourse assuming that you don't have any sophisticated recovery tools lying around in your basement. :-\

We don't know if we could bring down the total time to a dramatic low while doing what is supposed to be done for a secure wipe. But, as I mentioned in my earlier post, we can reduce the time close to half of what it was before. Tests are on for that now and will update as applicable.

Regarding the temp files, that may stay behind, invisible ofcourse, for now. :-\

Aneesh, that is dramatic speed boost if you can reduce it close to half

Concerning of the temp files how do you mean invisible, invisible (they dont exist) or insvisible (they are only hidden)
If option two is the choice, again there will be a large amount of temp files, which could result of windows crash, and go on low space.

If temp files are an option can you make something like,for example when 10 temp files are created with au wipe free space,(each has about 80mb), 9 of those temp self erase, something like that.So that user dont need to be by pc, erasing manually those temp files, what is very boring and time spending

By invisible, I mean you 'may' only be able to view the temp files through a recovery tool. Besides, these temp files have random names as well and would not make sense at all if you try to view them via a 'deep scan' as you put it in one of your earlier posts. The only scenario when some temp files can remain visible is during application crash while wipe is in progress. Anyway, tweaks are still on and let's see what improvements can be achieved in the limited time.

Thank you for description of scan method and improvements

Au 5.1 jump to 5.2 is like jump to 6.0 so many tweaks

uzi69,

As Aneesh said, the temp files remain only if AU crashes. Otherwise it does remove it automatically.
Also, we've tested AU's wipe several times this week and the only files that can be recovered are the temp files (with no meaningful data).

When we tested KillDisk, it was blocking access to the drive being wiped. So we do think it is creating temp files. Only, it is removing that info too.

We are trying to tweak the speed.
If the free space on a drive is 25 GB, and one is using the DOD 3 pass method, imagine the time for creating a 75 GB file. So there is a limit to the speed tweaks

Thank you for all tweaks.

It was so meaningless to manually delete temp files, when au wipe free space was running.
On 20gb partition, i have 40+gb of temp files to delete, so it was pretty boring process wait to au make
some temp files and than manually delete it, because i run out a free space:( ... lot of wait,delete,wait,delete in a
middle of a process.

The point with Kill Disk was that it is faster, and you dont have to be by the computer when it is wiping the free space, and there is no temp files, or as you said it is removing info.Also you want be able to recover that temp files with recover tool, like it is with au, what is very important for free space, because if some ammount of temp files can be restored, that means that those temp files are still on the hard drive somewhere and they are taking free space