| Author | Message | ||
     pleonasm Username: pleonasm Registered: N/A |
What is the process used by WinHex to initialize (erase) unused MFT records? What steps does WinHex take to ensure that the integrity of the MFT is not compromised? In particular, note that Sysinternals has written this cautionary statement about the “direct manipulation of directory structures”: “The reason that SDelete does not securely delete file names when cleaning disk free space is that deleting them would require direct manipulation of directory structures. Directory structures can have free space containing deleted file names, but the free directory space is not available for allocation to other files. Hence, SDelete has no way of allocating this free space so that it can securely overwrite it.” Thank you for your assistance. P.S.: Quotes are from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897443.aspx | ||
| Stefan Fleischmann Username: admin Registered: 1-2001 |
1) It identifies the FILE records that are not in used and wipes them, 2) leaving only some parts of the header intact. > In particular, note that [...] (I don't understand why I should note that at all if your question is about MFT records.) | ||
| pleonasm Username: pleonasm Registered: N/A |
Stefan, on a partition containing Windows Vista that may have background disk activity occasionally occurring, is it nonetheless safe to use WinHex to initialize the unused MFT records? In other words, does WinHex implement precautions to ensure that the integrity of the MFT is not accidently damaged during the process of erasing the unused FILE records for an operating system partition? Thank you for the clarification. |