I use CCleaner to wipe the free space on my 500 GB drive - settings below (usually 320GB of unused space remains on the drive to be wiped). The process takes around 3 hours to complete.
Over the past few days, after 10 hours wiping it claims there are still 19 hours left - and that time continually keeps climbing. Any ideas ?
If you're using Wipe Free Space too much that cause your hard disk to prematurely wear-out, it would only be beneficial to use if you were selling off your computer.
If you haven't rebooted in awhile give that a try, and it also run ChkDsk on the hard disk and hard disk partitions.
If you're using Wipe Free Space too much that cause your hard disk to prematurely wear-out, it would only be beneficial to use if you were selling off your computer.
If you haven't rebooted in awhile give that a try, and it also run ChkDsk on the hard disk and hard disk partitions.
I use it around once every six months, but as I change my laptop every 18 months or so, it only gets used in 'wipe free space mode' around three times.
I've tried rebooting, Chkdsk and nothing changes. I attempted again yesterday and after one hour it said '3 hours left', then after 3 hours, it said '28 hours left '! The time never goes down, only up.
You could try in Safe Mode to see if it works correctly and isn't a conflict with something else running on the system - such as antivirus software, some antivirus might not like a Wipe Free Space happening.
You could try in Safe Mode to see if it works correctly and isn't a conflict with something else running on the system - such as antivirus software, some antivirus might not like a Wipe Free Space happening.
Still no luck I'm afraid.
I think the next step is to remove the drive from the laptop and connect it up to a caddy, plug into the USB port of my desktop and try from there. Never had an issue with this before, so it must be something I've touched, altered or a program I've installed.
I've tried unchecking the following, and different combinations :
Wipe Alternate Data Streams - both checked, and unchecked
Wipe Cluster Tips - both checked, and unchecked
Wipe MTF free space - both checked, and unchecked
Secure File Deletion ( Simple ovewright one pass) - both checked, and unchecked
Nothing seems to work, all that happens is the time gradually increases. After 4 hours it says 10 hours to go, then after 10 hours it says 19 hours to go. Following that it never really gets past 40% and then the program stops responding and hangs when you close it down. Using recover I can get most files back...
... which brings me to point 2. I noticed on my old desktop which was cleaned a week ago, recover found over 20,000 files from 2009 that I could recover. So some idea of what's going on would be helpful.
I'm using Win 7 home premium, I've tried safe mode, checking for drive errors, switching of any anti-virus - all of which was never an issue in the past.
Do you have monitoring turned on? (just clutching at straws)
Are you running any auto backup/system image type software ?
If it is 6 months since you last run Wipe Free Space and it worked okay then, perhaps a clean install of the CCleaner version from around that time might give an idea if it's the change in CCleaner or a change on your machine.
No monitoring, and nothing running in the background.
I've removed the drive and attached it to another desktop via USB, and tried an old version and the current version of CCleaner - problem still exists.
It is without doubt linked to the system drive. I repartitioned the laptop drive into two sections (the existing system and a new logical drive), CCleaner worked fine on the new logical drive, but was still an issue on the system drive.
I cant see it being an issue with CCleaner, something in the system drive most be causing the issue. Very weird !