Cckeaner 7 - Wip free space

[Art1]

I have installed ccleaner version 7 free on my Windows 11 notebook. I have an SSD drive, not a hard disk.

I have not found the option to wipe free space. Where is it?

Thanks

[TheOwner]

That is stupid idea use it on SSD.

[nukecad]

@Art1

I have not found the option to wipe free space. Where is it?

See:

Wiping free space in CCleaner 7

It appears to be one of the features that has not made it across yet, there are a number of them. It may be added to v7 later? PS. You do not need to wipe free space on an SSD because the TRIM command already marks deleted files as free, making the data inaccessible without significantly shortening the drive’s lifespan. The SSD controller’s Garbage Collection and Wear Leveling complete the job. Wiping free space simply uses unnecessary write cycles on an SSD.

[Art1]

Then a deleted file on an SSD cannot be recovered?

[TheOwner]

It can be recovered through forensic analysis, but it’s impossible for a regular user. That’s why an HDD is preferable, as it can be overwritten an unlimited number of times. Even so, Windows stores traces of your activity in multiple locations — such as the thumbnail cache, pagefile, journal, defrag files, hibernation file (hiberfil.sys), temporary files, and more. So simply wiping free space might give you peace of mind, but it’s not enough for thorough data removal.

If you want to leave no trace on the disk, use a VeraCrypt container for sensitive data. But even that doesn’t stop Windows from tracking your activity.

[nukecad]

@Art1

Then a deleted file on an SSD cannot be recovered?

I have never been able to recover deleted user files (Documents, images, spreadsheets, etc) from an SSD using recovery software.

Try it yourself if you like, you can download/install Recuva for Free and tell it to search your SSD for deleted documents, or images.

If it finds any at all it will only be a few that haven’t been garbage collected yet.
(Maybe you disabled TRIM on your SSD, or it’s an external SSD connected by USB so doesn’t get TRIM commands. Without TRIM the Garbage Collection still runs but doesn’t run as often).

Recuva will find deleted System Files if you tell it to search for ‘everything’.
Presumably that’s because the way those System Files have been deleted means that they have not been TRIM’med and so the SSDs Garbage Collection hasn’t got to them yet.

However it is rarely System Files that anyone is trying to recover.

More about how SSD Garbage Collection and Wear Levelling work in conjunction with TRIM:

What is Active Garbage Collection for SSDs?

Note what that Crucial article tells you about how writing to SSD blocks/pages works, and think what that means for Wiping Free Space.
WFS works by writing junk data (eg, O’s and X’s) where the deleted file’s data was on the HDD, USB stick, SD card, etc.
WFS can’t do that on a SSD because that space cannot be written to until after it has been Garbage Collected.
And Garbage Collection clears it out anyway so there is no need to WFS after the Garbage Collection.

So all that Wiping Free Space on an SSD is actually doing is writing junk to as much of the SSD as it can and then deleting that junk again.
It doesn’t (can’t) overwrite any previously deleted data.
All a WFS is doing on a SSD is just using up some of the SSD’s write cycles and so shortening it’s lifetime.
If you WFS regularly and frequently (weekly or worse daily) on a SSD then you can make a big difference to your SSD’s lifetime - you are slowly killing it.