Question: Does using bleach in NU15 get rid of the files that show under the UnErase feature? In other words if I run UnErase and it finds 45K files that were deleted will bleach get rid of those files and it should no longer show any of those 45K files?
Details: I have NU15.0.0.122 and the bleaching does not seem to be functioning properly. I have one 160G drive that is partitioned to C:(primary) and to e:. E: shows a total of 127G w/43G free and E: shows a total of 21G with 4G free. I had run bleach on E: and it told me that it had freed up a little over a gig however the files still show in UnErase. Since then running bleach on E: and C: and does not show any files being deleted and does not show any message of any space being freed up.
Thank you for the answer, Papauz. That's what I was afraid of (: For a long time it would go through the bleaching process but not delete anything.
It finally bleached the Logical drive but will not delete anything on the (Primary)C: drive. When I have the MBR selected with the bleach and it boots up I see the message for the C: drive that it processed 16 items and deleted none. I think UnErase shows there are around 200,000 items on the C: drive.
I tried to copy enough large files over to C: to make the free space under a gig in hopes I could kick start something (as it seemed to work with E:) but so far nothing has helped to remove(overwrite) the files listed on C:.
If the last of the tinkering does not help I will Re-Install(again) {leave settings and such in place or remove I wonder?) and if that does not work I am not quite sure what I can do.
At this point I don't know if it is something going awry with NU15 or something with windows but now after a few days it is getting quite tiring.
Thank you again for the answer to the initial question, Papauz.
And just when I didn't think it could get any stranger, files that are deleted that end up in the Recycle Bin and then deleted from there are not showing up in the UnErase scan even after a reboot. Of course I have the Bleach option, both drives and the MBR clean all turned off. Along with the issue of Bleach simply not getting rid of the 200K deleted files (some are so far gone that they have no color code any more).
So I don't really have a clue what to do from here. I am scared to have someone tinker with it again as last time it created a couple of problems that led to losing a few passwords and brought the firewall down for a period of time so I am trying to get some understanding for a possible cause and perhaps even a solution.
I'm not sure if this will help, but maybe explain a little about what happens.
The name of any file is really not part of the file, it's a totally seperate entry.
You can verify this by making a text file with notepad.
name it: a.txt and inside it put 3 characters: 123 and save it.
If you right click on that file and select properties you will see the file size is 3 bytes ( 3 characters = 3 bytes).
Now rename the text file to the entire alphabet: acdef.............xyz.txt
If you check the size of the file it is still 3 bytes, so you can see the file name is not part of that file. The file name it'self is now 26 bytes long and that doesn't include any of the attributes, permissions, or other metadata about the file.
All that information is held in the MFT (master file table) for NTFS or the FAT (file allocation table) if it's FAT32.
I see both of you mentioned "MBR" if thats the term Norton uses it's actually incorrect but it gives you an idea that it's really a 2 step process.
Overwritting the file will make the file unrecoverable, but if you want the name to "disappear" then the MFT entry for that file needs to be removed or "scrambled" (I think scrambling the entry is the mst common way erasing tools use).
Not sure if that will help but it may explain the behaviour of what your seeing.
Overwritting the file will make the file unrecoverable, but if you want the name to "disappear" then the MFT entry for that file needs to be removed or "scrambled" (I think scrambling the entry is the mst common way erasing tools use).
I think this would be the exact error mumford68 sees.
So make sure you select the MFT clean as well.
DaveH wrote:
I see both of you mentioned "MBR" if thats the term Norton uses it's actually incorrect but it gives you an idea that it's really a 2 step process.
You are right Dave, I wrote it wrong, it is the MFT... :P :)
Good, I guess Symantec knows the correct term. LOL
I had the trial installed but I had to restore a clean image and I don't have it installed at the moment.
Thanks for that screen shot!
I also notice it uses the term "scramble" for some reason entries shouldn't be removed or deleted from the MFT.
Thats a shame because there is no safe way to recompress the file after it has been expanded to hold all these file entries.
So yes, I would agree that using that option should also remove the names. The way they get scrambled it becomes random data and that data should no longer be recognised as a valid file name.
So in the recovery tool those names should not show at all, original or scrambled, they should be gone.
I'll reload the trial when I get a chance, I was actually impressed that the recovery wizzard really worked as a recovery tool now and didn't use any silly tricks like it did before with the norton protected recycle bin.
Thank you both for the information. It helps a person that does not fully understand (or even close) behind the scenes events to learn a bit more.
My issue with the Bleach option is the fact that it does not seem to find any file names at all to overwrite during the process even though (when it works) the UnErase option finds close to 200k names which are all color coded (I assume to show the user the anticipated ability to recover files in tact) ranging from green, yellow, red and no color to show a good chance of recovery to probably no chance at all of recovering the file intact.
Not only am I again having issue with the UnErase option not being able to scan the primary drive (showing a Norton GUI error) and the bleach option not apparently killing off the 200K list of files but when the bleach operation completes and the system reboots it shows it only processing something like 16 items and deleting none. However when I bleach the E:drive (which is just a small (20Gig) partition of the primary drive it shows it processing something +4700 items even though the bleach option seems to have overwritten those names as they no longer show up in the UnErase scan.
Thank you as for correcting the MBR term. I had written it incorrectly obviously the correct term is the MFT :)
I did not wish to inundate the thread with many pics however I would like to get a better idea of what I might be able to do or at least what to expect if I have to have a rep. poke around the system again as last time trying to deal with the problematic Unerase feature lead to the firewall and email scanning in N360 to stop working, then to have a rep. re-install it only to lose the passowrds from the last time I had backed them up (thank goodness some were backed up or all would have been lost)
I wish I could take a sceen shot of it showing how many processes it was going through before windows fully loads and that none are deleted along with any other language on that page. I will try and use a phone cam to take the place of a screen shot.
Thank you again for your patience, time and sharing of knowledge.
Thank you for the screen shot above. I wanted to display the ticked on options as well as pretty much the starting point of running this. At this point the issue is not shown in the pic.
Thank you! The description about how to permanently get rid of the file names helps me to understand why ticking it on to clean the MFT records can be important. I think when I first ran bleach I did not have it set to clean the MFT basically becuase it started up with it being off (not to cleat the MFT records) as a default and I was not sure of what (risk) the outcome would be and I am wondering if this can be the cause that it now can't clear out those names?
I have two more screen shots that I present here that shows 1) the information right before it reboots right after finishing bleaching both drives and 2) The MFT cleaner after doing its thing. Again I keep seeing approx. 200,000 file names when running UnErase on the primary drive but in the 2nd picture it shows 16 items processed and none dealt with. While on the other partition (E:) it shows 4780 entries processed and 35 cleared even though UnErase has since the first bleach run on that drive usually shows less than 35 file names.
I'm sorry that I had not before mentioned that it is NTSC.
Again, there is an issue with UnErase not being able to scan C:. There is a message that displays along with information it wants to upload to MS. I would be happy to post pics with that as well as send any of the information associated with the error if anyone would want to see it. I was hoping to get this fixed and be able to help others avoid/fix however I have not been able to find any other threads with this issue so I guess I am the only one that is expereiencing it :)... I'd be happy to show pic's of the recovery files showing 200k file names as well but would have to get that working again :)
I appreciate it Papauz. I have unfortunately not only tried this from DOS but also through the Windows GUI for the disk and also I believe it is basically what Norton does from one of the utilities menus in NU15.
Hopefully I do not try to fix the issue and end up fixing the hard drive the hard way by deleting anything critical as I don't know how much longer MS will honor activating WinXP :)
Question: Does using bleach in NU15 get rid of the files that show under the UnErase feature? In other words if I run UnErase and it finds 45K files that were deleted will bleach get rid of those files and it should no longer show any of those 45K files?
Details: I have NU15.0.0.122 and the bleaching does not seem to be functioning properly. I have one 160G drive that is partitioned to C:(primary) and to e:. E: shows a total of 127G w/43G free and E: shows a total of 21G with 4G free. I had run bleach on E: and it told me that it had freed up a little over a gig however the files still show in UnErase. Since then running bleach on E: and C: and does not show any files being deleted and does not show any message of any space being freed up.