chad_grimaud

I can run it again if you like, but I ended up trying another program [Moderator removal of competition product name] and it found most of the files. So since I've already restored them and moved them around it will probably mess up the Recuva results. I believe it was about 2700 found/ignored at the bottom. I did ensure that I had all options checked though so I'm not sure what it was ignoring/hiding. If 30 min for 3TB is too fast, maybe it's not fully scanning it and that's why it isn't finding the files? I do have deep scan selected. This particular drive isn't used that much, it's not a daily-use drive where I'm constantly adding and deleting things, so that may be another reason.

Today I deleted a couple hundred files, and then cleared the recycle bin a couple minutes later like I usually do. Immediately after clearing the recycle bin, I realized I needed some of the files, so I opened Recuva and ran it in advanced mode with all options checked. It found nothing. The files were on my D drive, which is not my boot drive, it is a 3TB Western Digital that I use for storage and nothing else. I performed no further actions on the drive after the deletion of the files and clearing of the recycle bin. I immediately ran Recuva, which took about 30 minutes. So I have a couple of questions about this: - I hear all this talk about how data isn't really deleted, it can always be recovered, etc. however it appears as though data on this particular drive IS permanently deleted and eradicated immediately upon clearing it out of the recycle bin. So what is going on here? Why is this drive permanently destroying the data as soon as you click the delete key? - Is there anything else I could try, to get these files back, or are they just gone for good? When running in advanced mode are you still supposed to click something else in order for the hidden/deleted files to show up in the results? Under options>actions I have all 5 things checked, but the results window comes up completely blank. I really don't understand how they can already be gone for good, seeing as about 30 minutes passed since deleting them, plus I did absolutely nothing else on the drive after deleting them. Is this just a wonky drive specifically designed for people to use for storage of illegal files?

Thanks for the reply. Are you referring to the Options screen that starts with "show initial results in detailed view" etc? I didn't see a "advanced mode" option so I assumed you meant the Advanced tab under the options/settings menu. If more than 1 pass is unnecessary why does CCleaner even include those options? I was under the impression that the more passes, the more un-recoverable the files would be. I searched around about the recycle bin and I seem to have gathered that it does wipe anything that has been removed from the recycle bin, and anything that has been shift-deleted, but NOT files that are currently in the recycle bin. So this is fine, this is how I would expect it to function. If I'm getting anything wrong please let me know.

Hi everyone, I recently installed CCleaner on my office computer for the purpose of using the "wipe free space" feature to permanently delete all of my deleted files. I tested it out with 3 passes. Then after that, I attempted to recover the files using Recuva (because if they were recoverable, then I would know that the wipe was not successful). So this process prompted a couple of questions: 1) Recuva said it found 0 files, with 128000 ignored. What is this? Did it actually find 128000 files and why is it ignoring them? Does this mean there are that many deleted files, but that they are just unrecoverable so there is no point listing them? 2) Am I correctly using the "wipe free space" tool for my purpose? (meaning, is "deleting already-deleted files so that they are unrecoverable" what this tool is designed to do?) 3) I was a little confused about the wipe free space tool, because on the CCleaner website it says that this tool does not permanently delete files that have already been erased from the recycle bin. So I didn't fully understand this, because I always empty the recycle bin daily, so there is nothing in it (or sometimes I just shift-delete files). My goal is to permanently eliminate these files that have already been deleted and removed from the recycle bin. I don't care about the recycle bin and I have no files in it. Can someone clarify exactly what the CCleaner faq is trying to say in regards to the Recycle Bin? Thanks for the help, I appreciate it