Someone reviewed v on Jul 5, 2022

Pros: 555

Cons: 555

Bottom Line: 555

Hilbert reviewed v6.2.0.2969 on Apr 13, 2015

carlvui is correct, this program causes too many issues to ignore. I've tried most releases of Eraser over recent years and it has made very little improvement.

A reasonable way of testing these so-called erasure programs is to run various recovery/un-erasure software after you've used them. Often, the results are very telling—and worrying, what's found in the recovered shrapnel is often a little too revealing . (Ideally, you should always test such products this way-or better still, do so with the correct tools on another O/S such a Linux where NTFS isn't protected by the Windows O/S.)

The first thing to realize is that NTFS volumes cannot be fully cleaned, the data may be erased but traces of your activity often aren't. Moreover, the 'cleaning' ability varies widely from product to product, and Eraser is one of the worst.

I've had Eraser miss cleaning actual file names and un-erasers have detected traces of files that have not been cleaned. NOTE: by this I'm not saying that where Eraser has actually erased data that the data is recoverable. What I'm saying is that it can miss data, it can leave file names on the disk and it can actually miss files.

[Note: from my experience, the only reasonably safe way of properly cleaning NTFS volumes is to copy (and hold) the data onto FAT32 or other media–but not NTFS–(to eliminate streams) then properly erase the drive with say DBAN – Darik's Boot And Nuke, then repartition and format the drive with a 'hard' full format such as

format [drv:] /x /p:1

This writes zeros to each and every sector but it's slow, then copy the wanted data back onto the original drive. Needless to say, this is why people use such programs as Eraser. Again, be warned, they're not perfect, and there are significantly better programs than Eraser such as Jetico's BCWipe.]

carlvui reviewed v6.0.10.2620 on Oct 26, 2013

This software causes more problems than good. Works with incidents, have display problems, crashes when window minimized, and produces more and more incidents and works less reliably after each use and reboot of the PC.
Hard to uninstall i.e. too much leftover that I had to remove manually files, registry and msconfig startup.

Used on Windows 7 64BIT.

Midnite12 reviewed v6.0.6.1376 on Dec 15, 2009

I have to agree with emanresU deriseD, as this latest so-called Final release of Eraser is buggy as Hell! The progie kept popping up an error message then shutting down. Even 5.8.8 gave loads of error messages, so had to go back to 5.8.8 Beta1, which seems stable.
If you do manage to get Ver. 6 to work, which is highly unlikely, don't use the wipe free space feature or you will be sorry!!

When you look at who the developer is, you will understand why this crapware is so buggy. I left a message on the web site, telling Joel to go back to the drawing board and Not release his garbage until he properly tested it.

ballyhairs reviewed v5.8.8 Beta 1 on Dec 7, 2009

CCleaner has wipe empty space function in the new releases, I tested recovering wiped data by CCleaner and couldn't recover anything.
Did the same with eraser and recovered some :(
Used Eraser 5.8.8 Beta 1

Earwicker reviewed v5.8.8 Beta 1 on Jul 15, 2009

Still hangs when I try to activate the context menu...

anomoly reviewed v5.8.8 Beta 1 on Jul 10, 2009

5 for STILL being an open source package which btw is at version 6+ beta stage. It uses under 40 MB's standing still on my pc, but that is small potatoes as it never needs to be left running in order to use it. As always with ANY software you use at your own risk.

emanresU deriseD reviewed v5.8.8 Beta 1 on Jul 8, 2009

It has been said many times before but it bears repeating: This software hassn't been worth the page it's displayed on since Tolvanen turned it over. What does it take for people to realize this? For me, the annoying bugs are enough (i.e. shell extension problems, stability problems, failure to wipe all selected data). But consider that there was a RELEASE version of this software that was destroying data when free space was being overwritten. If you don't learn your lesson from THAT, you deserve whatever you get.

1 star for a dishonest and inept developer who obviously don't care about the software, and simply wants to bump the version every so often to get a few donations from idiots.

Earwicker reviewed v6.0.5.1114 RC5 on Jun 13, 2009

Hmm, not sure you've improved this. Causes the system to crash when I try to activate the shell (right mouse click in explorer), and generally seems clunky. Also, it all a bit conspicuous for a privacy/security tool. I'm glad this excellent project is being maintained, but please prefer substance over style!

cltx99 reviewed v6.0.5.1114 RC5 on Jun 11, 2009

I've been using eraser for years too. I'm not jumping into a new version as my old version works so well. The rating is for the version I use, not the new RC. I use Eraser 5.3

us3r reviewed v6.0.5.1114 RC5 on Jun 10, 2009

I've been using Eraser version 5.86a for six months or so without any major problems. I've just tried this new version on virtual machine and it crashed twice and it uses like 50 MB of ram even when it's not doing anything. This new version seems to be very poorly programmed. The guy maintaining it rewrote most of the code like he claims and to be honest it seems he f@ck it up.

'Posted by: Joel, 10 June 2009, 7.00pm, +800 GMT

Having written almost 25,000 lines of code since the start of our project, v6 was due for a code review. So that's what I did, reviewed the code with the help of a static code analysis tool (FxCop for you developers out there :) ) and fixed all sorts of inconsistencies in the code. This should result in slightly higher performance and better behaviour when Eraser is in use. See the full announcement.'

jeck reviewed v6.0.4.875 RC4 on Feb 5, 2009

I have used earlier versions of Eraser without problems, however, I do have to admit that this current version is unstable enough that I do not feel comfortable letting is do anything. It is quite possible that interference from my firewall and even possibly my other security software may have had something to do with it, but I just don't have the time to troubleshoot it. For now Eraser has to go. Too bad; Eraser had and still does have promise. I will examine it again later.
I very rarely give a program a 1 rating but I couldn't justify anything higher. It was so unstable and had so much problem with it that I really didn't get out of the starting gate and I didn't trust letting it do anything.

shodan816 reviewed v6.0.3.847 RC3 on Jan 6, 2009

Been using Eraser for YEARS, on everything from Windows 98 to Vista, with nothing but fantastic results. Tried numerous times to recover files that were wiped with Eraser, but to no avail. My ONLY criticism is that, for some reason, the Erase context menu will not pop up for *.url files. Wish this could be fixed. Still a '5' in my book!

Undesired Username reviewed v5.87 Beta 1 on Jul 8, 2008

Ever since Sami Tolvanen handed this project over to someone who obviously has no experience in the subject and little interest in maintaining the software, I don't trust it AT ALL. The forum used to be replete with cases of users losing data, and I do NOT just mean with beta versions. Curious how many of those forum threads have been removed...

Edit: Against my better judgment, I installed 5.86a (final, NOT beta). I tried erasing some files that were locked, and Eraser offered to handle them upon the next boot. And that next boot was interesting: Nothing but a black screen that hung permanently. Eraser wasn't doing anything, other than screwing up my system.

NEVER again.

P.S. reidyn is wrong.