Well, I didn't get much smarter from reading that. ![:D]()
Despite being a thorough explanation, most of these computer terms are pretty foreign to me. Anyway, I take it it has nothing to do with my main concern - i.e. the thumbnail cashe and thumbs.db files. My first guess would be that the thumbnail cashe is the place where thumbs.db files (despite being located in folders and sub-folders) have a common repository, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Reading up on it a bit, it seems CCleaner won't delete/wipe these hidden files or the information they store if one deletes a couple but not all files in a folder, unless they (thumbs.db) are manually removed by either deleting the file(s) themselves or the folders they're in, am I correct?
Anyway, I just tried searching for thumbs.db files with advanced settings in Windows search, and I only found a bunch of 20 or so for my graphic card. Which is strange, since I do have some folders with files in them on my main HDD. I tried doing the same with my external HDD, and the search took less than a few seconds without finding anything.
Anyway (again), I entered my external HDD and created new folders for pretty much everything I've got stored there (since many of the folders were old and the thumbs.db files in them could possibly contain information that I had previously assumed would be "completely" wiped with the wipe free space option in CCleaner/then using Recuva afterwards). After I was done, I could see that by checking properties on the new folders, there was an extra file in some of them, but not all, for whatever reason. I then clicked the "show hidden files and folders" in the tools/option bar, but the (new) thumbs.db files could still not be seen, even though they were obviously there. Anyway, I then ran Recuva and found a lot of thumbs.db files, which I wiped.
So, this brings me to my next (and probably confusing) question. Since most of the old thumbs.db files I deleted with Recuva were stored in sub-folders, wouldn't the folders and sub-folders that contained the the sub-folder(s) I set out to delete, also contain their own thumbs.db files which in turn consist of information of the sub-folders' thumbs.db, and then the other sub-folders thumbs.db, and so on... if you get what I mean (this is some complicated stuff ![:D]()
)? And even if they don't, will the new thumbs.db files in my new folders restore information from the old thumbs.db files in my old folders, that I deleted?
Last, I wan't to appologize if this is a bit or completely off topic and for my (I assume) somewhat confusing explanations, but it's an interesting question since from my understanding, a wipe free space with CCleaner should be considered a safe option, without having some lurking thumbs.db files storing information you thought were gone.
EDIT: I now saw that these files can be manually indluded and deleted in CCleaner. Does this work; is it safe; and does it work on external HDD's?