Iolo's System Shield is a very limited erasing program
for a lot of money ($40).
Download Trial version it at:
Iolo's System Shield
What it does it does well. For instance, it has a neat
utility for erasing deleted file names - whether they
were deleted by the Recycle Bin method or by erasing
with another eraser product.
What makes life easy with this function is that it hunts
down these left over buggers by itself and clears them.
That means no manual hunting through directories with
DirSnoop. That is neat!
However, for $40 bucks, that is about all it does. During
the Recycle Bin cleaning - it erases the information from
the files that were deleted in this insecure manner. It
also wipes free space.
They also have a $130 Professional version. I'm not even
going to speculate on what that is supposed to do for that
kind of money.
Both versions supposedly works with NTFS disks as well.
Here is a capture of exactly what it does.
It does seem rather skimpy in the tasks department.
How well does it do these few jobs. Excellent.
For the first test - the only one I was really interested
in, was to see if it really wiped the file names of formerly
deleted/erased files.
I created seven text files and wiped them with BCWipe.
Here is the output of BCWipe. (If you read my page
regarding BCwipe, you will remember it adds random file
names, containing no extensions, for each of the seven
DOD passes, and seems to throw in an extra few for good
measure - probably working temp files.)
Here is some of BCWipe's output.
In the capture below, I scrolled horizontally in DirSnoop
so that the file sizes were visible. You will notice that
BCWipe does leave a zero file length. (It's a great eraser.)
I then used the System Shield setting that sets it to erase
DELETED FILE NAMES.
Here is the capture showing System Shield's output.
The file names of the files wiped by BCWipe are gone!
Scrolling over to the size column with DirSnoop shows the
file sizes are zeroed. This function works wonderfully.
Checking System Shield Recycle Bin Erasing
It seems it should be somewhat easier working with this
program which allows you to merely hit the DEL key
when getting rid of files, because it has the ability
to search the disk on request and erase both the contents
and names from the operating system's memory of the files
in the Recycle Bin.
Let's see if it really does work this way.
For this test I used the DELETE key to delete six files
from a directory, thus sending them to the Recycle Bin.
After checking with DirSnoop to make sure I made no mistakes
and that the deleted filenames were in both the Recycle Bin
and the directory from which they were deleted.
Here are the six files in the Recycle Bin.
Here is a DirSnoop view of the six deleted files in
their original directory from which they were sent to
the Recycle Bin.
Let's see now what we have after I use System Shield to
erase the files in the Recycle Bin. I am going to use the
all three settings, telling it to erase:
Deleted file names
Deleted file information
Files in the Recycle Bin
I did not use the option to wipe free space, since I have
found with my tests with other erasers that wiping free
space does not get rid of deleted/erased file names.
First view is of the Recycle Bin to see if it has been emptied..
Yep,it is empty.
Now let's check it with DirSnoop.
As you can see there are no file names showing. The file sizes
(not shown) have also been zeroed in length.
So it has done it's job with the Recycle Bin.
Now let's see how things are in the original
directory from where the files were deleted.
What the hell -
The program did NOT clear the directory of the deleted
file names! (Yes I did refresh the view in DirSnoop.)
Now that is strange. In my first test, when I used the single
setting to get rid of DELETED FILE NAMES from files I had erased
with another eraser, the program did seek out and erase those
names from view.
It would seem now that when deleting the files by sending them
to the Recycle bin, that System Shield does erase all traces
of them in the Recycle Bin, but overlooks the names in the files
in the original directory.
<Groan> More work...
Okay, I'm not going to hammer this thing to death. I am simply
going to repeat the first test of erasing some files and then
running the program again to see if I repeat my first results
Hang on for a few minutes....
Ha-Ha!
System Shield WILL seek and find old file names from past files
if these files were erased!
It does erase the file names of files in the Recycle Bin, zeroing
out their file lengths. However, it does NOT go back and erase the
names remaining in the original directory. According to DirSnoop,
These are still there. It does zero the file length, but it leaves the
file names of those deleted files totally intact.
Almost, Mr. Iolo, but no cigar.
That could hang a newbie who checked only the Recycle Bin, and not
the original directory.
Iolo says that you should use the free space wipe to also erase
old filenames. I have yet to see any program's free space wiper
accomplish that. I didn't waste my time spending a number of hours
doing a free space wipe on my large disk for naught. I consider
his advice little more than advertising.
This limited program also does not have the ability to erase
files via a File Explorer right-click shell menu.
It's method is rather different than other erasers. It takes a
bit of getting used to for us who never trust the fates unless
we have that right click erase menu.
The high price for these limited functions might be worth it to
some - If they are aware of the flaw regarding cleaning out files
from the Recycle Bin. If one always erases with an eraser that does
not clean out file names, nor randomizes them, nor the extension, this
program would be handy for using the function to hunt down these file
names and kill all traces of them. Although, with the freebie Tolvanen's
Eraser, you don't have worry about erasing file names. It does it as
the same time it erases the file(s). (Which I cannot test because it
doesn't work on my machine.
Now, if you will excuse me, I deserve a second jelly roll for this one.
Go back to menu on HOME page.
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