Please forgive the simplicity of this question, but for the first 30 years of my life, high tech word processing consisted of an IBM typewriter. CCleaner installs and works beautifully on my windows 7, 64 bit machine. I have been using an external hard drive to back up data, and some old data files have been marked for deletion. Can CCleaner and Defraggler both be used on the external hard drive? How do I get them there, as they download and work on my internal C drive. Would the 'slim' version be downloadable and designated for installation on the external hard drive? Better to ask a dumb question and allow the public to observe the level of stupidity, rather than keep the world wondering. Thank you.
Welcome
Defraggler and Recuva should work just the same regardless of whether you are dealing with an internal or external drive.
CCleaner can recognise the programs that are installed in Windows,
and knows the junk that each program is likely to leave on C:\ and can remove that junk.
CCleaner is unlikely to recognize junk that is held on external drives so would not offer to clean them,
but it does have under "Options" the "Include" a section which allows you to specify types of files and folders to delete from any chosen drive.
All the above can be done without needing to install on the external drive.
Personally I only have a single instance of the portable version of each in
E;\TOOLS\PIRIFORM\
P.S.
I am not sure what you mean by "marked for deletion".
I only know of this as being a very temporary state following a deletion attempt which cannot be completed at that time,
and the system is the set up to delete that item at a later time.
I suspect that if you make a backup copy to the external before the item is deleted then the copy will be made,
but when the original is deleted the copy will remain and neither Windows nor CCleaner will be aware that it is an unwanted copy.