Sdelete syntax error?

Question

Does anyone know why I can't run sDelete to delete the free disk space on drive C? It works on drive D.

I have tried both versions 1.61 and 1.51 and both give the same results:

SDelete - Secure Delete v1.51
Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

SDelete is set for 1 pass.
Cleaning free space on D:: 2%

And when I try to run the exact same command on drive C: this is what happens:

SDelete - Secure Delete v1.51
Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

SDelete is set for 1 pass.
Cleaning free space on C:: 0%Could not create free-space cleanup file:
The filename, directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect.

I know about Cipher.exe, but I would like to get sDelete to work.

Answer 1

Assuming that you are already running the program as Administrator (as I was when I got this message).

If you take a look at the source code for sdelete (I found it here), you can see that it is trying to create a temp file to use in the zeroing process.

_stprintf( tempFileName, _T("%sSDELTEMP"), DrivePath );   
hTempFile = CreateFile( tempFileName, GENERIC_WRITE,    
                0, NULL, CREATE_NEW,    
                FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING|FILE_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL_SCAN|   
                FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE|FILE_ATTRIBUTE_HIDDEN, NULL );   

if( hTempFile == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE ) {   

    _tprintf( _T("Could not create free-space cleanup file: "));   
    PrintWin32Error( GetLastError());   
    return FALSE;   
}   

In my case, the TEMP environment variable was set to "C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Temp\1", and that directory did not exist.

To check your environment variable for TEMP, open a CMD prompt and type SET TEMP. This will print out the value for this environment variable.

In my case, I was preparing the operating system as a golden image template. I had just cleaned out the Temp folder and was going to zero out and re-thin the C: drive. I recreated the missing directory and everything worked as expected.

Answer 2

This can be solved by running sdelete (or the Command Prompt you started it from) as administrator. Instead of double-clicking on the Command Prompt icon (cmd.exe), right click it and select "Run as Administrator".

Answer 3

The error message can be confusing. For me, it was the temp directory that did not exist...

mkdir %temp%

did the trick