Beware File Shredder

[alex30]

Hi,

I have just had a potentially very difficult situation caused by the File Shredder.

As I had a large folder of data that I didn't want falling into the wrong hands sitting on one of my external hard drives I decided to use a 35 pass overwrite using ASC File Shredder. I was careful just to select the one folder and also asked it to wipe associated free space. I left it to get on with it and checked progress a couple of times. All seemed to be well until about 80% into the deletion when everything froze. No progress was being made and my PC was totally unresponsive. I had to resort to holding the power button down to turn the machine off and then when I turned it back on it froze on the manufacturers logo screen and would go no further. So I now had a machine that would not boot. Bear in mind that I had pointed File Shredder to one file on my external hard drive and not at anything on my PC drive, that is the C drive. Somehow it had corrupted my C drive so that my machine was useless. I couldn't even boot in safe mode.

Fortunately I am a big believer in disk imaging as a security measure and was able to boot from a rescue CD and restore a recent disk image I had made using Macrium Reflect and which was stored on a different external hard drive. When I was up and running again I tried to open the other external hard drive to see how much of the unwanted data was left but windows didn't recognise it. For a nasty moment I thought I had lost the hard drive but unplugging and restarting it brought it back to life.

Just to say that I will never trust File Shredder again but will use CCleaner Disk wipe after first deleting the data conventionally and then wipe the free space. CCleaner has never let me down but I thought using File Shredder might have been quicker.

Regards Alex.

[Toppack]

I assume you are using the File-shreader that comes with Version-4 of ASC, correct?

I have used it, with no problems, but I did Not try it on an External drive.

But I don't see why that would make a difference.

I've not used it in Version-5, but maybe the problem has been corrected in 5, if there really was a problem in 4?

[alex30]

Hi Toppack,

It was indeed version 4.

Regards Alex