Okay, say I have a 1TB hard drive. (And for the sake of simplicity, let's assume that all 1,000 GB are available for use.) And I have...oh, let's say 150GB currently used. And finally, let's say I have 50GB of deleted files that haven't been "securely" deleted. So there's 850 GB of free space, including 800 GB of disc space that has never, ever been written on.
I want to securely delete (wipe) those 50 gigs of "deleted" files. But I don't want to waste a lot of time (and unnecessary wear and tear on the drive) overwriting the additional 800 gigs of "virgin" space that has never been written on. Am I correct in assuming that CCleaner's Drive Wiper cannot distinguish between disc space that has been written on and "virgin" space, and will just go ahead and overwrite the entire 850 gigs of free space whether I like it or not?
You could run a Recuva deep scan and then select everything that's found and securely delete them, but this will still leave the file and folder names visible.
Well, I've gone back and re-read all the relevant documentation in excruciating detail. It's disorganized, poorly-explained, and inconsistent, but it appears that I have two choices, neither of which are ideal:
1. Securely delete all my deleted files using Recuva, but can't securely delete the filenames, or
2. Wipe the free space on my hard drive, which WILL securely delete the filenames, but will also overwrite acres of empty space on my hard drive that doesn't need to be overwritten, all of which will take about 13.7 billion years.
Seems strange that Recuva, with all its highly touted features, doesn't have any way to wipe the MFT, as CCleaner does.
RBJ said: "Wipe the free space on my hard drive, which WILL securely delete the filenames"
But, as I have just discovered, that does not appear to be true. The file names still exist and are displayed by Recuva even after a Ccleaner wipe free space.
RBJ is talking about Drive Wiper, which will wipe the MFT when running a wipe free space. If WFS is selected from Options/Settings then the Wipe MFT box needs to be checked to wipe the MFT.