Is CCleaner in the long run will corrupt the hard disk?

[malwarecide]

:ohi forum members

 

will CCleaner will corrupt my hard disk drive I ve heard that in the long run it will damage the hard drive because of overwriting and dleting of temporary files!!!

[Alan_B]

The answer is NO.

 

I have not used CCleaner for a couple of days.

 

Right now it is prepared to remove 30 files totalling 54.54 KByte.

Typically there might be another 10 MBytes in the Firefox cache - but that is excluded unless I close Firefox

 

WINDOWS on the other hand has modified since this morning,

625 Files totalling 1.9 GByte, or 250 MByte if you exclude pagefile.sys and hyberfil.sys

 

I would say that in normal use :-

Windows completely re-writes 2 GByte per day, which is 500,000 off 4 KByte sectors over-written.

CCleaner overwrites only a few sectors for "normal" people who are content with the default of removing the directory information,

or 1250 sectors IF you want to waste time with a secure over-write.

 

In addition, files get fragmented and Windows de-fragmenters are always busy churning away with many more sectors being over-written.

And of course if you do not clean temporary files, then that is even more stuff for the de-fragmenter to get its teeth into.

 

If your disc is worn out after 5 years,

CCleaner will have contributed only a minute of wear for normal people,

or perhaps 5 days if you have a single over-write.

There are some who prefer to over-write 35 times, but even then normal quiescent Windows will still grind at least 10 times as much.

 

My computer is 4 years old. My concerns are :-

Continual degradation and reduction of Windows integrity as one Patch Tuesday follows the next;

Needless wear on bearings due to constant rotation of the disc when there is no data transfer;

Spasmodic flashing of the drive LED when nothing should be happening so Windows and Defragger come out to play.

 

Till today I have never thought about CCleaner wearing out the drive.

I wont think about it again ! !

 

Regards

Alan

[davey]

:ohi malwarecide,

Welcome to the forums!!!

My friend Alan_B is very informative and thorough in his response.

I decided to try to explain it in a little simpler manner for you and possibly some other new users.

 

The question is very interesting. I had not heard this suggested before but CCleaner does not "erase" or ""secure delete" data unless requested by selecting an option to do so.

 

Most users never need to use this option. However, the option is available to overwrite(secure delete) if you have private data that you absolutely want destroyed.

 

Deleting of files does not involve "overwriting" of data. The deleting of files is the normal function of CCleaner.

 

"Secure-deletion" of files does involve overwriting of data and increases the amount of time to do so.. It also requires extra writing of data to your hard drive. Some PC users think that overwriting multiple times is required but it is not. You must select this option intentionally since CCleaner's default is Normal file deletion.

 

http://www.ccleanerbeginnersguide.com/

CCleaner Beginner's Guide.com Bookmark and save to Favorites

Good luck, davey

[malwarecide]

hi davey and allan b

thanks to your very informative response to my question