Remnants of files left on NTFS disks - PGP Shred Free Space

Products

• Symantec Products

Issue/Introduction

When using PGP Shred Free Space on an NTFS formatted disk, remnants of small files are left on the disk.

 

Resolution

Wiping small files: Wiping small files (under 1 K) on some NTFS-formatted disks can leave remnants of the file behind due to an NTFS optimization that stores file data in internal data structures for very small files. These structures are not considered freespace even after deleting a file, and thus they also will not be wiped using PGP Desktops Freespace Wipe feature.

In addition, NTFS supports Journaling, which can save wiped file data in an internal operating system cache. For the highest security wiping on NTFS disks, we recommend starting your system from an OS on a different partition and using PGP Desktop's option in the Freespace Wipe feature to overwrite these NTFS data structures (the Wipe NTFS internal data structures checkbox). This does not affect FAT32 or other supported file systems.