I THOUGHT IT WAS SOMETHING THAT GAVE YOU MORE SPACE BUT INSTEAD IT TOOK ALL MY SPACE I NEED HELP IMMEDIATELY
May I suggest you turn off your caps lock, it makes it seem as though you are shouting.
You have given no information at all such as whether you are using xp or vista. Also what, if any, error messages you got, and if the program ran it's full course.
Wiping free space will not give you any more free space than washing the kitchen floor will give you a larger kitchen.
Although I only have a few clues about how CC's free space wipe works, I suggest that you search your drive by date, the day you ran CC. Sort the result into date/time order. Have a look at the approx time you ran CC wipe free space. Can you see a number of largish, similarly named, strangely named files? Do they contain zeroes? Were they all created consecutively withing the CC run time? If so delete them, at your own risk.
It is possible that CC wipe free space didn't run to conclusion, and the filler files, which do the overwriting, were not cleaned up.
Perhaps clean wipe space files should be an option in CC.
I THOUGHT IT WAS SOMETHING THAT GAVE YOU MORE SPACE BUT INSTEAD IT TOOK ALL MY SPACE I NEED HELP IMMEDIATELY
I have just run Wipe free space, with my heart in my mouth i watched my free space depleting I stayed with it until it finished and all my free space was back, maybe you should run it again.any
other Guys or Gals out there who would know that running again would work.
Yes if you do not allow Wipe to finish (and it "sticks" for many people at 100% but I say just let be be for a while) Wipe Free space will CREATE a file that is the size of the FreeSpace Cleaned
i.e.
User has 100GB of Freespace
User Runs Wipe FreeSpce
User See's that it has been at 100% for 15 min
User get's Angry "Why isn't this finsihed??? {CENSORED} it I'm just going to close CCLEANER
User now has .1 GB freespace and a file that is 99.9GB Large
Look it may say 100% that means the file is made it takes a long time for windows to process the deletion of a 99.9 GB file Much less a bigger one like many of us have with our 320 GB drives or Terebyte Drives
When CCLEANER says that this takes a while It means Leave it alone I left it for Probably 5+ Hours for my 200 GB of freespace and it did fine. When it's done you will still have the SAME amount of freespace you had when you started the Process (in the example if user had let it finish user would STILL have 100GB of freespace)
Developers THIS IS WHY I WAS SOOOOOO AGAINST ADDING THIS TO CCLEANER
Developers THIS IS WHY I WAS SOOOOOO AGAINST ADDING THIS TO CCLEANER
Me two.
Murphy's Laws apply here:
We are looking into what might cause this
MrRon
Me two.
Murphy's Laws apply here:
I would tend to agree. I don't think this feature necessarily goes with CCleaner's purpose. I would see this feature being more useful in Defraggler in my opinion. But with new features, come questions and users who have never dealt with those features. Hopefully, if the developers do decide to keep the feature in CCleaner, with a little time, we can educate everyone on what wiping free space does and the expectations that come along with it.
Keith
Yes if you do not allow Wipe to finish (and it "sticks" for many people at 100% but I say just let be be for a while) Wipe Free space will CREATE a file that is the size of the FreeSpace Cleaned
i.e.
User has 100GB of Freespace
User Runs Wipe FreeSpce
User See's that it has been at 100% for 15 min
User get's Angry "Why isn't this finsihed??? {CENSORED} it I'm just going to close CCLEANER
User now has .1 GB freespace and a file that is 99.9GB Large
Look it may say 100% that means the file is made it takes a long time for windows to process the deletion of a 99.9 GB file Much less a bigger one like many of us have with our 320 GB drives or Terebyte Drives
When CCLEANER says that this takes a while It means Leave it alone I left it for Probably 5+ Hours for my 200 GB of freespace and it did fine. When it's done you will still have the SAME amount of freespace you had when you started the Process (in the example if user had let it finish user would STILL have 100GB of freespace)
Developers THIS IS WHY I WAS SOOOOOO AGAINST ADDING THIS TO CCLEANER
So what is the point of the ''FreeSpace'' wipe, if it doesnt do anything at all?
So what is the point of the ''FreeSpace'' wipe, if it doesnt do anything at all?
Basically, deleting files normally on your system only removes the reference to that file from the MFT (Master File Table).
The data is still on your hard drive but the space it takes up is now available for the Operating System to use, and eventually it will be overwritten.
If you have sensitive data on your hard drive, wiping free space will overwrite all that data with whatever the particular Wipe Free Space application uses. A lot of zeros or whatever.
And then information will be written to the MFT making that overwritten space available again to be overwritten, but now without any sensitive or personal data on it. And I actually sound as if I know what I'm talking about here.
That's my take on it anyway, and I think it's probably close. If anyone wants to improve on that, feel free.
And then information will be written to the MFT making that overwritten space available again to be overwritten, but now without any sensitive or personal data on it.
Granted it deletes the information in the files in the MFT but leaves the names of the files that can be looked at using Recuva.
While I like the free space wipe feature I just wonder if the option to even do a free space wipe should be either moved in its entirety to Options - Advanced or maybe even moved to Recuva which seems to be the more logical application for it to run under.
Please Piriform
Remove the wipe free space option
as many inexperienced users might damage their drive without kwowing.
We are looking into what might cause thisMrRon
Hi all,
Nice support group you have here! Much better than other applications ;-)
I'm a CCleaner newbie and also experiencing Wipe Free Space problem. In my case it is likely HDD related. Before trying CCleaner I was using CyberScrub successfully for several years on a Seagate 120GB. CyberScrub Wipe Free Space never gave a problem during this time.
However, I upgraded to a WD 1TB last week and CyberScrub Wipe Free Space locked up about 2/3rds of the way through and machine posted 'Fatal Error'. After that OS was unstable and I was forced to re-build.
Thinking it was a software issue I downloaded CCleaner and gave it a try. Same problem, (blue screen and drive space lost) but not exectly identical symptems. This time OS is stable, but Defragmenter reports my Freespace is now down to ~500GB; compared to 850GB before running CCleaner Wipe Free Space. Where'd the 0ther 300GB go?? Defragmenter now shows a huge "red' swath of unusable space and will not run anymore. My solution was to (once again) clone my backup drive. All is well for the moment...
In my situation, and since both CyberScrub AND CCleaner Wipe Free Space lock up and crash, I wonder if this is 'Write Cache' related? Can't remember for sure if this feature was enabled on my Seagate but, for sure, it's enabled on the new Western Digital. At this time I'm considering disabling and attempt Wipe Free Space one more time. But, since I've done 2 re-builds in one week, believe I'll hang around the forums to see if Mod's are able to nail it down for sure <GG>
Having used Wipe Free Space for several years, I consider it essential to any disk maintenance utility. IMHO most CCleaner users are probably very happy to have this feature available now.
Those of us who are experiencing problems will eventually discover a solution.
Thanks,
smeck
PS
I have logs from previous crash if developers are interested.
Hi Smeck, it's always good to hear a new perspective so the oldies don't get too stuck in the mud. I think that wiping a 1TB drive shows a certain amount of what can I say, well, optimism for a start. How long did CC run before throwing in the towel?
Having used Wipe Free Space for several years, I consider it essential to any disk maintenance utility. IMHO most CCleaner users are probably very happy to have this feature available now.
I'm not sure what one would gain by running a disk free space wiper. It adds nothing to efficiency, space use or speed. It does of course overwrite old deleted data, along with apparently a huge amount of never-written-upon disk surface, but how many really want that? The gain, to remove the risk of sensitive information being - in extreme circumstances - retrieved, is hardly worth the trouble of regularly wiping the remainder of the entire disk. I think that too many people will run the free space wiper just because it's there. Thank heavens that Gutmann isn't an option.
I think I'll develop an application for wiping new disks after purchase, but actually does sweet Fanny Adams. It'll sell by the thousands.
How long did CC run before throwing in the towel?
~90min
Please Piriform
Remove the wipe free space option
as many inexperienced users might damage their drive without kwowing.
You three:
Just to add my two penneth to what I think is a pretty important debate about CCleaner and this feature, I've ran it once out of curiosity, without any hassle I might add. But I won't be running it again.
As pointed out above, a lot of people are gonna be running this because it's there, unlike the people who run it because they think they need it.
I never ran a Wipe Free Space application before this feature came along, and I see no reason to start now.
If you don't understand this, then it's likely you don't need it, so don't run it. There probably isn't a user out there who runs CCleaner with all boxes checked, so treat this like any other checkbox.
If you're not sure, leave it alone.
I THOUGHT IT WAS SOMETHING THAT GAVE YOU MORE SPACE BUT INSTEAD IT TOOK ALL MY SPACE I NEED HELP IMMEDIATELY
ktrue, some of us are very interested in the details of your experience.
How about it?
smeck
We have fixed a bug that could cause some temp files to be left behind during wipe freespace and this will be fixed in the next release of CC (in a few days).
It will also tidy up any temp files that were left by the previous versions
MrRon