Been using CCleaner for years. Why does it now take up to 4 hrs to wipe the free space on C Drive on Windows and Applications?
Are you using Drive Wiper or options/Settings? I would think that the time for wiping free space depends on the disk size, whether wipe MFT has been checked, and how many passes have been selected. I haven't personally noticed any increase in time with the same disk size and options.
The following are checked: "Normal file deletion", "Wipe Free Space drives" and "Wipe MFT Free Space"
Is this correct?.
There's no correct or incorrect, it depends on what you want.
Normal file deletion has no part in wipe free space. As you are running wfs from Options/Settings it will do one pass of zeroes. Checking Wipe MFT will obviously take more time, depending on the size of the MFT and how many invalid records it holds. The rest is due to the size of the disk and how much free space there is. Possibly the fragmented state might increase the total time as well.
Also when you run wfs you are running the other cleaning processes as well (unless you right click wfs in Cleaner and select Wipe Free Space, which runs it alone). As you have selected normal file deletion this shouldn't take too long, but still has to be accounted for. Wipe Free Space, simple overwrite, within Drive Wiper will do a stand-alone wipe so you can see how long it is really taking.
@DONM,
At least it completes for you. I never finishes for me, and causes my rig to hard lock.
I've unticked "Wipe free space" in Options. All ok now.
Thank you Augeas for your assistance. Much appreciated. I've unticked "Wipe free space" in Options as a temporary measure and will continue to tinker until it works satisfactorily.
What type of drive are you attempting to Wipe Free Space on, i.e.; a magnetic hard disk, SSD, or NVMe?
Hi Andavari. It's a magnetic hard disk.447GB with 275 Free.
Thank you for posting that info DONM.
Sometimes a hard disk can give issues if there's physical errors on them, running ChkDsk /r on it "may fix the issue" if it is a hard disk error - which I only mention because once when trying to make a whole disk image of a laptop it always failed at about 80% however after running ChkDsk /r it was able to finish.
Carried out CHDSK. Managed a screen grab before the results screen vanished; Means nothing to me except "Found no problems"