Drive Wiper does not work ?

CCleaner for Windows CCleaner Windows Bug Reporting
1

When running Drive Wiper multiple times over a complete HDD,

i can afterwards succesfully use Piriforms "Recuva" to find

thousands of files, including their names and reportedly being

in "excellent" condition. Howeever, i never tried to recover any

of those.

I just want to add that for securely wiping entire disks of

course also has to get rid of all filenames, so no one ever can

read which files i stored on the disk.

When i use the windows internal full-format on a disk, Recuva

cannot find anything but a few files related to the mbr and the

System Volume Information folder. Someone told me this may be because ShaodwVolumes

being active under windows.

So, any ideas why all files seem to remain with CCleaners format?

Thank you very much,

i like Piriform software a lot :)

2

Presumably you are running Wipe Free Space on a system drive. This will, as it says, overwrite all free space on a drive. Recuva in normal mode will read the MFT, which is a system file holding a list of file names and disk addresses. If you recover any of these files they should be zeroes.

If you want to overwrite the MFT entries you can use CC's Options/Settings/Wipe Free Space, with the Wipe MFT box ticked, and Wipe Free Space ticked in the Cleaner section.

If you format the drive Windows will create a new MFT which contains only system file entries.

3

No, i wiped the full drive, as i said. The one where you have to enter "ERASE".

4

Alright then. An entire disk erase will reformat the drive then run a wipe free space. After that Recuva should show a few system files only.

What settings did you use for Recuva? Deep scan, scan for non-deleted files? How long did the disk erase take?

5

No, i wiped the full drive, as i said. The one where you have to enter "ERASE".

I guess you were erasing a NTFS partition that was not the System Drive.

No one can guess :-

Your operating system;

What drive were you erasing, and HDD or other;

Full HDD or just a partition;

Secondary or External and how connected.

6

Ok, sorry.

OS: Win 7 Professional x64 SP1

I formatted internal-nonsystem (media) drives. Four of them. Attached through the SATA

interface. Yes, they were NTFS disks, one had multiple partitions, but two definitley

only had a single partition on them.

A single format took around 45mins for a 250gb drive. I formatted each of those

3-7 times using the "1x" option, not the Nsa/DoD/Gutmann ones.

And in Recuva i did a deep scan. I told it to look for all files, in the options dialog.

with the four or five checkboxes.

7

Did you have wipe MFT checked off in Options>Settings

8

Edit: It wasnt off, i was on, of course. I just misread what you

wrote in the first place.

Recuva's format consisted mainly of three steps when wiping a drive(, if i remember correctly,

but i'm pretty sure of it):

"Format drive" (10secs)

"Erase MFT" (30secs)

then followed the final complete format (45mins or longer).

9

Edit: It wasnt off, i was on, of course. I just misread what you

wrote in the first place.

Recuva's format consisted mainly of three steps when wiping a drive(, if i remember correctly,

but i'm pretty sure of it):

"Format drive" (10secs)

"Erase MFT" (30secs)

then followed the final complete format (45mins or longer).

I haven't used Recuva in a while, so were you using the wipe feature of CCleaner, & not Recuva?

Also, what version of CCleaner?

10

Probably a mistype in Dhhd's post, as Drive Wiper is in CC.

Wipe MFT is an option in Options/Settings/Wipe Free Space, and does not affect Drive Wiper settings. Drive Wiper works on a specific partition, not an entire hd. I understand that it formats the partition and then runs WFS. The format will allocate a new MFT and other system files.

I'm not sure what 'Erase MFT' means. I didn't think this was run or was necessary but perhaps it is, although I would like to know what it's erasing. This is perhaps too complex to go into here.

Concentrating on the single partition disks, I would expect many files to be listed by Recuva, as a Wipe free space fills the disk with random named files and then deletes them. What sort of names were the files? Recognisable? What were the contents (look at Info in Recuva for the first 240 bytes - zeroes or data?)?

11

Hi,

yes, i formatted with CCleaner, not Recuva. Recuva cannot format from what i know. It gave me for example dll filenames for an old windows partition.

It wasnt random at all.

They were gone when formatting a single time with windows 7 itself, so i cant say anything about the

content anymore. Also as said, they were told to be in excellent condition.

Regards,

dhhd

12

Please update to the latest version of CCleaner and let us know if you still have the problem.

Thanks

13

I am pretty sure this was the latest version already, and unfortunately, my drives are

all now formatted. I think i don't want to go through the whole procedure again. :(

Sorry :)

14

I'm not sure what 'Erase MFT' means.

MFT = Master File Table

This is where all the file locations are mapped on the system.

15

Yes, I meant what does the poster mean by that. I've never erased an entire drive, but this seems strange to me. After a format why would the new MFT need 'erasing'? There would be nothing but sys file entries in it. Is it because there might be some residual data in the unused part of the MFT allocation? Does CC do some sort of block write on the unused clusters of the MFT allocation? I assume that CC does a quick format - in 10 secs.

The poster also said that 'then followed the final complete format'. The finsl stage is a wipe free space.

However from Vista onwards a normal format (not a quick format) will write zeroes over the entire disk (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941961/en-us). So, if you have the time, just run a Windows standard format on any drive you want wiped.