clearing the pagefile on shutdown

i know im opening a can here but do you guys advise clearing the pagefile on shutdown. i would prefer to sacrifice shutdown time for bootup and the added security. what do u think guys

no one got any advice??

no one got any advice??

Yes. it'll do no harm. you may experience a long shutdown thats the only difference. but you can do it once in a while

how much time does it add to a typical shutdown??

It varies. It depends on your system. you have to do it and see.

There's not really much security at all in clearing your pagefile at shutdown, as you would have to overwrite that space with data at least seven times.

does doing it actually make startup quicker

Clearing page file upon shutdown will definitely slowdown the process. I've done that in the past and if you have the patience, go for it. It all depends on the size of the pagefile. The larger the pagefile, the longer the shutdown gets.

If you are paranoid about wiping the tracks of your activities, I suggest you do this.

Since you already have CCleaner and I assume you do. Go download the Eraser program. This is a secure delete software and its free. It has all the Guttman you want.

Now use CCleaner as a reference of what it cleans and transfer all that into Eraser. Now all the tracks not only get wiped out, they will be securely deleted.

You will always have to cross refer it once in a while because there will always be new paths and files for deletion.

Try it out.

There's not really much security at all in clearing your pagefile at shutdown, as you would have to overwrite that space with data at least seven times.

Did you just pick the magic number seven out of your hat?

DoD specs

Assuming your two abbreviations are a reply to me.

What about "U.S.Department of Defense Sanitizing (DOD 5220.22-M). The algorithm using 3 passes of overwriting."? It seems dod recomends 3 passes.

DoD 5200.28-STD

Look in Eraser, there are two DoD items.

Three passes = US DoD 5220.22-M (8-306. /E)

Seven passes = US DoD 5220.22-M (8-306. /E, C and E)

Look in Eraser, there are two DoD items.

Three passes = US DoD 5220.22-M (8-306. /E)

Seven passes = US DoD 5220.22-M (8-306. /E, C and E)

So then why do you claim that "There's not really much security at all in clearing your pagefile at shutdown, as you would have to overwrite that space with data at least seven times."?

So then why do you claim that "There's not really much security at all in clearing your pagefile at shutdown, as you would have to overwrite that space with data at least seven times."?

It's a setting in Windows to clear the pagefile on shutdown. It's a standard one pass delete. You'd still have to overwrite that free space.

Actually, it's not even a one pass delete. Windows will only mark it for deletion... the clusters are really deleted later, once they have been re-allocated to and written to by a new file.

Wouldn't defragging the hdd place other data in the particular disk clusters to make the removed data non-recoverable? With the size of current hdd's I can only imagine how long it would take to just do 1 pass of overwritting with an erasing program let alone 3 or 7.

Yes, that is correct. Defrag screws chances of recovery, but only by one pass. Advanced forensic engineers can still retrieve data.

Yeah, secure-wiping a drive these days takes an ungodly amount of time. If only hard drives were solid-state...