Phil#2

Sorry, should have been clearer. From what you are saying, its normal and expected to see the drive full up during a free space wipe, and then go back to normal size upon completion. Previously during a 7Hr wipe, the drive size wouldn't increase at all during the wipe. From what you are saying, that would mean that the free space on my drive wasn't being wiped. Therefore, if the drive is filling up during a free space wipe, that's what it should be doing. I get that in most cases a drive wipe isn't that necessary, if you are using CCleaner to wipe your internet history and delete files. But it would be nice to have the back up of a free space drive wipe and know that it is working.

Correct, that was what I was saying in March and this is the problem now. As stated in previous post, 'when I try and wipe free space the hard drive starts to fill up.' That means the available space in the HD gets smaller and smaller during the wipe. So during the wipe the HD goes from 400GB free, to 350GB free etc. I then get a warning stating that files must be deleted. When I stop the wipe, the HD immediately goes back to its original size, before the wipe.

So this has been happening again unfortunately, when I try and wipe free space the hard drive starts to fill up. I've tried re installing CCleaner, tried older versions and a system restore. Nothing seems to work. Any suggestions much appreciated.

So I fully uninstalled CCleaner free, and installed CCleaner Pro. It took a reassuring 8 hours for a 7 pass drive wipe. It could have been that the old copy needed to be fully uninstalled and then reinstalled, FWIW I may just purchase the Pro version, as I use the program a fair bit. So that seems to have solved it. Thanks for your help.

Thanks for the reply. FWIW I use the drive wipe once a month or so. Have tried an earlier version of CC, to see if it took the same amount of time for a wipe. As with the most recent release, it says 7 hrs and then wipes in 1 hr at 7 passes. I haven't changed the size of my drive dramatically of late, so around 500GB free. So to go from 7 rs to 1 hr when wiping the same amount of free space is a bit strange... Can you recommend any other hard drive wiping software? Be interesting to compare. However, be good to get to the bottom of just why CC is suddenly taking so much less time for a free space wipe. Erasing internet history, takes the same time as usual.

I've noticed recently that the Drive Wiper function has increased in speed. So normally it would take around 7 hours set a 7 passes. Now its done in about an hour. Does this indicate that there is a problem? I have the latest version of CCleaner Free. Thank you.

Cheers for the reply. I'm not too concerned about the pop ups really, more so what the cookies that have been placed in my machine for so long mean to my privacy. Would they be sharing my browser history with the likes of google, facebook or where they purely for pop ups?

After using CCleaner for some years, I've recently discovered that there are some cookies CCleaner are putting on the 'Cookies to Keep,' list. Amongst them are Google, Microsoft and Facebook. Looking through the articles on piriform, I came across this. "CCleaner Free users may sometimes be shown contextual offers. (For example, to install Google Chrome or Avast antivirus). So that only relevant offers are displayed, a cookie is stored on the user’s machine. CCleaner will always try to keep or replace these cookies..." https://support.piriform.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047828672-Select-cookies-to-clean-with-CCleaner-for-Windows#how-to-use-intelligent-cookie-scan--0-12 So if I've got this correct, CCleaner will PUT cookies on your device, from three of the most notorious data gatherers on the net. And even if you delete them, CCleaner will replace them. Basically, that means that I have had less privacy protection from CCleaner, than if I manually deleted cookies from my browser. This is a bit of a shock. I can't be the only person that has discovered this. I've written to CCleaner asking what these cookies have been doing, and what information about my browsing history has been passed on. I'm guessing they'll tell me that I have to check with the relevant companies. If anyone could share some light on this, that would be much appreciated.