wipe free space?

CCleaner for Windows
1

does wipe free space act like encryption? placing random data into free space?

does it act like a file shredder, placing even more random data in free space to make data unrecoverable?

I ask because when I ran wipe free space, my hard drive space became all used up to the last 20gigs, then when it entered mft free space wipe, my hard drive regained its space.

what is mft free space?

thanks in advance!

2

Hi iconicmoronic, and welcome to Piriform.

A description of Wiping Free Space feature here:

http://docs.piriform.com/ccleaner/using-cc...free-disk-space

And details of the Wipe MFT Free Space feature here:

http://www.piriform.com/blog/ccleaner

Hope that helps.

3
A description of Wiping Free Space feature here:

Hello,

I assume that Wiping Free Space is proceeding when/during running a regular cleaning as long as this option is activated ?

Is it possible to run separately a full and complete "Wipe Free Space" action on one (or more) drives ???

Thank you for any comment

Berny +++

4

Hi Berny,

Options -> Settings -> Wipe Free Space drives. (Select drives)

Cleaner -> Advanced -> Right click on "Wipe Free Space" and select clean.

5

But you shouldn't do it, unless you want to erase already deleted files. It won't improve performance. It won't recover some free space. :)

6
Cleaner -> Advanced -> Right click on "Wipe Free Space" and select clean.

Thank you Jamin ;)

7

Hello,

Thank you all for your comments ....

It won't recover some free space. :)

Yes i konw ....

erase already deleted files. It won't improve performance.

I think that "write actions" on the hard disk are gaining some 1000ths of a second :-)

Before the system writes on the HD, it's searching for free space and will try not to overwrite

already deleted files that are in fact not (completely) deleted - they are still present but not visible -

and the system will search for another "clean/free" space (blank "ff" in dos) before writing.

A defrag may also be smoother when you have a clean HD ....

8

As far as I know, the system will write the file in the first free space it finds :)

The defrag will not be smoother at all, I think. Windows doesn't make a difference between "deleted files containing thousands of 0s" and "deleted files containing data". They're both deleted files.