East-Tec Eraser 2011 should sound familiar to those perfectly aware that preventing deleted data from being recovered requires professional assistance. The application’s abilities include various methods to delete data as well as sanitizing the free space on drives.
If you think that once the Recycle Bin is emptied the data it contained is gone forever, you’re dead wrong. Information will stay on the disk until it becomes overwritten, and thus corrupted that the bits cannot be pieced together.
Through the three modules (Privacy Guard, Erase Deleted Data and Erase Files & Folders) featured by East-Tec Eraser 2011 you will be able to automatically clean web browsing traces, information stored by some popular applications as well as data gathered by Windows. Sanitization of free space is also on the menu, ensuring that files that have already been deleted are no longer recoverable. The third section of the program lets you securely destroy files and folders of your choice.
The price for this application is set pretty high at $49.95, but the developer offers you the chance to test it with its features fully functional for as long as 15 days.
After installation, which was a smooth process in our case, you will meet the Risk Alert Monitor, which warns that there are issues you should attend. The problems, of course, refer to data that needs to be securely deleted.
The
Risk Alert Monitor will actually warn you that items targeted by Privacy Guard and Erase Deleted Data modules are on your computer. It can be configured to pop a message with a specific frequency or you can turn it off completely if you find it too annoying.
Though it tackles a serious problem, working with East-Tec Eraser is a simple matter. The most important modules come with a guiding wizard that shows you through every step for a successful operation.
Privacy Guard is designed to get rid of sensitive information gathered by certain programs installed on the system or the system itself. It can work either in basic mode, which comes with a set of pre-configured defaults and simply runs them, or advanced more. The latter allows you to choose which areas you want to be wiped.
The categories of software East-Tec Eraser can clean after include the most popular web browsers, news and email readers as well as a hefty list of popular applications. By default it will display only the programs detected as installed on your system, but you can always view the complete list by enabling it to display items that are not installed as well.
We noticed that the detection of installed programs under Applications tab does not function very well in East-Tec Eraser since we’ve seen some names that were not supposed to be on the list as well as some weird versions for software we had installed.
The test machine was also used for
avast! Internet Security 6 evaluation and East-Tec Eraser detected avast! Home Edition 5 on the system. Also, it listed Daemon Tools Lite 4.3 as installed, although Programs and Features applet in Windows showed no trace of it and neither did Windows Registry.
On the upside, if you take a look at the Windows data East-Tec Eraser sentences to oblivion you will be able to check the targeted location for each entry. This is actually available for each of the tabs in the module and can help you decide if you want that sort of information securely deleted or not.
In the case of web browsers the application is set to automatically detect the locations where history, cache and cookies are stored. However, if auto-detection is off you can define the right locations/files yourself.
As far as the second major module, Erase Deleted Data, is concerned, the options available let you customize the way drive sanitization option runs: you can wipe the free space only, or the entire drive with live data on it. Moreover, for an efficient wiping procedure, file slack can be included in the job; also, East-Tec can mess with the properties sheet of files and folders and scramble the information.
For any erasing job you have 13 default algorithms to choose from. And if none of them is to your liking (which is a pretty odd chance) you can create your own. The recipe for a new wipe method includes the number of passes and the pattern (byte or text pattern, a set of random bytes or characters). Mind that you can define a different pattern for each pass.
The third module in the program is reserved for wiping any file and folder you want. A simple drag and drop of the items in the application window is all you need to do to load them up. In the lower left pert of the screen there is a slidebar that lets you select the wipe method to be used along with some info on its speed and efficiency.
Among the traditional methods at your disposal there are the famous Bruce Schneier’s 7 passes and Peter Gutmann’s 35 passes, which is known to render hardware data recovery hopeless. The best part is that even if you are not familiar with these methods they are explained and their abilities presented.
The duration of the deletion process depends entirely on the amount of data that has to be processed as well as the number of passes of the wipe method used and the complexity of the algorithm. The latter variables also add to the efficiency of the operation.
The Good The wizard-driven interface ensures easy handling of all the modules. It comes with a huge list of wipe algorithms and you can also create a custom one, complete with multiple passes and patterns.
You can use it to destroy web browsing data from the most popular browsers on the market. This includes history, cookies and cache, but bookmarks, saved passwords and form data can also be thrown in the mix.
The scheduler lets you program wipe tasks to occur with a desired frequency. It sports all the options for the regular, manual jobs.
The Bad Unfortunately its auto-detection skills for installed programs need some tweaking since in our case it listed some apps that have never been on the test machine, and the targets obviously referred to inexistent locations.
Although it is not a serious matter, from an aesthetic point of view we have to mention that the empty window after you close the quick-start guide is still available in this edition, just like in the previous ones.
The Truth We definitely saw an improvement in
East-Tec Eraser 2011 compared to
the previous edition we reviewed. It still sports an extremely easy to handle interface and an impressive amount of wipe algorithms.
The price of the application is quite a drawback at $49.95, but you will get an incredible set of options that make sure your data cannot be recovered.
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Version reviewed:
Features:
(4/5)
