kamak

no i dont use cleaner.ini - setting is "E:\Downloads\*.*", include files and subfolders - i dont even know what "HD or SSD?" means. Yeah we established that several days ago and have moved on, but i do want to say theres no need to say it as if only an idiot would even think it worked that way. If you wipe the free space through the "Tools - Drive Wiper" route then you get an option to choose the number of passes. So any normal person would assume that through the "Options - Settings" route the number of passes would also apply to free space. Even if that werent so, theres no reason to think that it doesnt work that way, and weve already discussed how a simple line of text in the window would prevent any confusion in the future and, as i said, weve moved on now.

as i stated in my opening post, drive E is simply a small partition. its on my main drive. i only have the one physical drive. i'm pretty sure the connection is IDE, its just a standard, basic installation (if this is important and i need to check i'd need advice on how to) and the file system is NTFS

ok i installed Recuva, wiped the partitions free space with a program called Eraser to have a clean start and then used my test file as previously (copied it into a custom delete folder on that partition and ran ccleaner on 35 passes). The file was no longer in the folder when looking for it normally. Recuva recovered the file perfectly, its a movie and i could watch it. so it seems that secure deletion isnt being applied to custom inclusions. on a side note: perhaps a simple line of text at the "Wipe Free Space" settings - stating that its single pass only - would avoid any confusion in future on that matter.

thnx for your input kroozer. ive now investigated further and the previous version does exactly the same. ive also more worrying findings on "secure" file deletion with the current version. using a test file of 676MB which i repeatedly copied into a custom delete folder (with hindsight i could have copied into the TIF folder but the principle is the same) i ran the cleaner at various overwrite settings and got the following results which should speak for themselves (note i repeated each setting several times and reproduce here the most common result): CLEANING COMPLETE - (0.777 secs) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 676 MB removed. Secure file deletion enabled - Very Complex Overwrite (35 passes) CLEANING COMPLETE - (0.737 secs) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 676 MB removed. Secure file deletion enabled - Complex Overwrite (7 passes) CLEANING COMPLETE - (0.738 secs) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 676 MB removed. Secure file deletion enabled - Advanced Overwrite (3 passes) CLEANING COMPLETE - (0.799 secs) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 676 MB removed. Secure file deletion enabled - Simple Overwrite (1 pass) CLEANING COMPLETE - (0.712 secs) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 0 bytes removed. Secure file deletion enabled - Very Complex Overwrite (35 passes) according to this, the difference between overwriting zero bytes, and overwriting 676MB 35 times (which is actually writing 23,660MB isnt it?) is less than 0.1 secs. so it appears to me that everyone who believes theyre securely deleting their files with 3, 7 or even 35 passes, isnt. hopefully were getting 1 pass of random overwrites, which i guess is better than nothing. but my faith in ccleaner is totally shaken. previously if i had to take my pc in for repairs, i was confident that all my personal data was securely deleted. id like to add here that i may be totally wrong in all my conclusions from these tests ive done. i'm no IT proffessional. and i apologise in advance if i am. but if i am wrong i'm sure i'm not the only one that would like it explained how these figures could mean anything else.

I'm not sure if this is only in this version but thats somewhat irrelevant. when "wipe free space" is selected in the main selection window and cleaner is run, it takes the same amount of time to clean regardless of the number of passes selected. i have a tiny 2.8gig partition [Temp (E:)] which houses my TIF and Cache and downloads etc, and i routinely wipe the free space with 3 passes. after updating it seemed considerably faster than previously so i decided to check it out. it takes approx 46 seconds whether using "normal file deletion" or using "secure file deletion" with any number of passes from 1 to 35. it does, however, correctly quote the method in the post cleaning report. eg. "cleaning complete 46 seconds, Secure file deletion enabled - Very Complex Overwrite (35 passes)" yet, if i wipe that partions free space thru the Tools/Drive Wiper route, then each increase in the number of overwrites significantly increases the clean time as it surely should, up to 1hr 15mins for 35 passes (estimated at the start and allowed to run for a couple of mins before cancelling). therefore one would suspect from this that wiping free space thru the normal "run cleaner" operation is not wiping the free space as intended, and appears to be only using 1 pass regardless of settings, unless i'm missing something glaringly obvious, which wouldnt be a first time :s