I have just downloaded the new version of CCleaner Pro Plus and I want to set the number of passes on the Drive Wiper but I cannot find the Options tab. On the old version I was able to set the number of passes to either 1 Pass, 3 Passes, 7 Passes, 35 Passes etc but on the new version I cannot find where to do this. Can someone help please?
I assume that you are meaning the v7 Beta version?
(Because the number of passes option is still there in the official v6.## version).
You do not need any more than one pass when wiping a drive, any more that one is just overkill and a waste of your time (and extra wear on the drive).
Multi-pass wiping might have been beneficial 20 years or so ago with ATA/IDE and older drives, which is why CCleaner included the option for multiple pass wipes; but with todays HDD’s one pass is sufficient.
Drive wiping an SSD is simply shortening it’s write life for no real reason, particularly any multi-pass wipe.
Hey, thanks for the reply, much appreciated.
Just a quick question if I may: So are you saying a single pass is as secure as multiple passes on an SSD, and that multi-pass wiping is no longer necessary security-wise? My computer is a Lenovo IdeaCentre with an SSD drive, by the way. Many thanks.
Drive wiping writes random data the the part of the drive to be wiped, (usually 1’s & 0’s, or X’x & Y’s, etc), and then removes them again.
So anyone trying to recover the file contents that used to be there will only be able to recover thoses 1’s & 0’s etc.
(Note that recovery software may still find the filenames of what files used to be there, the names may still be in the Windows Master File Table (MFT), but the contents that those filenames pointed to will have been overwritten).
So it doesn’t really matter how many multiple times (passes) you then wipe again, it isn’t acomplishing any more than the first wipe did.
If you like then you can think of it a bit like using a sander to take a painted sign back to the bare wood and painting over it (with 1s and 0s), do it once and what was written there is gone, so there is not point in sanding and painting it another 7, or even 35, times. (All that’s doing is wasting time and wearing things out).
Many thanks for this, very helpful and very much appreciated 