Greetings,
How can I 'point' CC cleaner to my usb drive to clean it?
Many thanks, chrissy99
It doesn't.
Greetings,How can I 'point' CC cleaner to my usb drive to clean it?
Many thanks, chrissy99
What is on your usb that could be cleaned?
Well CCleaner can't clean your USB. Usually the computer doesn't automatically put junk files in your USB unless it was you who put some crappy files in it in the first place.
But it is possible to install CCleaner Portable on a USB flash drive that you can then carry and use in different computers without having to install CCleaner in the hard disks of those computers. CCleaner Portable along with other CCleaner builds can be downloaded for free in this link.
I disagree.
1. You can run portable Applications on a USB drive,
and through no fault of your own they may create junk files you want to purge.
2. Ccleaner IS ABLE to clean a USB drive, even a Flash drive.
You can stipulate all the Folders and Files that you wish to Include for deletion.
BUT it may be reluctant to use its built in knowledge to FIND those junk files,
other than in accordance with your specific directions of what to Include.
3. I suspect Ccleaner can also find for itself and then delete all the normal Windows junk files on a USB drive if you have booted into Windows on that USB drive and that USB drive is therefore your system partition.
In practice however it may normally be simpler to put on the USB drive a simple Batch script to purge all the junk you anticipate when using the USB drive, and to run that script when you have finished using the drive.
Regards
Alan
I don't think it is possible to install your operating system in your USB flash drive. USBs use fast flash memories and by default, formatted as FAT or FAT32, not the standard NTFS on internal hard drives where you install the operating systems and besides, many USBs have far smaller capacities that hard disks and, lets say those only 1,2,4 and 8 GB in size.
CCleaner does have an option to clear certain files and folders in the computer. Just open CCleaner, go to Options, click the Include button and from there you can see the Add Folder and Add Files buttons. Clicking the Add Folder button lets you browse in whatever location in the computer that you want CCleaner to clean and that includes USBs and even the folders inside those USBs.
The trick is, if you add a folder on the USB in the include list, how would you suppose that CCleaner will know which files are safe to delete inside those folders???? It might end up deleting important files in your USB.
Well if you want a program that can supposedly search for junk files on the USB, there is a free program called Advanced System Care 3. Its not really fast. It has this disk cleaner tool for all drives and you can use it to search for junk on the USB only but for multiple times, I tried to scan my USB with that disk cleaner tool, no junk files were ever detected.
If the USB is small in size, especially if it doesn't have many folders and subfolders, its not hard navigating inside it and locating which files are no longer needed.
I don't think it is possible to install your operating system in your USB flash drive.
The trick is, if you add a folder on the USB in the include list, how would you suppose that CCleaner will know which files are safe to delete inside those folders???? It might end up deleting important files in your USB.
Hi
I was slightly ahead of you there ! !
My point 3 specifically refrained from referring to booting from a FLASH drive.
I had in mind my 320 GB USB2 connected HARD drive with both FAT32 and NTFS partitions.
And when I said
"BUT it may be reluctant to use its built in knowledge to FIND those junk files,"
I really meant
"There is no way that Ccleaner could distinguish between junk and vital files on Flash drive"
but that would suggest I had more knowledge than the developers of Ccleaner,
and therefore knew their limitations.
If I include C:\Windows\System32\*.* for cleaning,
it is POSSIBLE that Ccleaner would refrain from purging all the *.EXE files,
BUT I assume that Ccleaner is more likely to obey orders ! !
Regards
Alan
Wow, 320 GB, that's a different issue.
Why don't you try the app, I suggested you then??? When you open its disk cleaner tool, it auto-detects all drives plugged in your system and that includes USBs and external hard drives. It searches for junk in all those external drives.
Thanks to all for your responses. This was my first post, and I'm always willing to learn. Will try adding to the include set as well as the suggested SW.
Let's consider this thread closed. Thanks, Chrissy99