CCleaner fills up my Hard Disk Drive :O

[dertrottel]

Hey there,

 

I even registered on here because this problem is messing me up. I deleted some bigger and some smaller files, using CCleaner. I am using Win7 32bit on a self-built RAID 1 computer system. I had some files as big as 45GB to be deleted even. It took ages to delete them, so the Gutmanning process was interrupted several times. No matter if I shutdown my computer manually after 2 days of overwriting or if my antivirus software did it for an update ...

 

CCleaner went on with the same files when I restarted later. But somehow, which didn't ever happen when I used WinXP or Win7 64bit, CCleaner is not making my HDD empty, but making it more and more full. It's definitely the program because the value stays constant until I start the deleting process. So finally, it changed between 35GB to 0Byte of empty HDD space on my C: partition. This is completeley messing me up, especially because my system now is not running correctly any more because of a lack of Cache memory.

 

And ... when I think that before I started it, only about 360 of my 930GB were used, I even get mad. I had that with another 1TB HDD before, but an external one. This could be backed up and re-formatted easily, but I can forget about that with my Windows Partition.

 

What could I do when I don't want to reinstall my entire system? The internal Windows functions could make 1.4 empty GB again, but that's not really a development on my C: drive. Thanks for your help!

 

Grtz

[Winapp2.ini]

First, don't run Guttmann. It's useless in every way and will just wear out your RAID 1 array.

 

Try the program TreeSizeFree to see where your biggest folders are, they're likely the ones causing your issues.

[Alan_B]

Doing this on a self-build RAID system with Windows 7 and several dozen reparse points interlinking all over the place involves complexities that would give me nightmares.

 

If you include wipe free space that is guaranteed to fill your disc to the brim until it completes and removes the files with which sectors were over-written.

 

An Abort/shutdown is a sure way to ensure your free space is lost for-ever - UNTIL you track down the jumbo over-write files in the root of C:\

I forget the names but you should easily spot them with Windows Explorer - or search this forum it has often been posted.

 

When you find them you can easily delete them and regain your free space.

 

None of the moderators here advocate more than a single pass over-write,

and I suspect they only put their computers in danger to see what happens so they may advise victims.

[Alan_B]

@Winapp2.ini

we must stop meeting like this

[Winapp2.ini]

Ooh, that one was even a same time-stamp

[Super Fast]

You might want to hold the SHIFT key, then right click the file & choose delete.

When Windows has 0 space for a recycle bin, that could cause problems.

 

If you are using Drive wiper function of CCleaner, I suggest you DON'T.

The only time that is useful, is if your donating your drive to someone else.

 

Don't get me wrong, that isn't to say it isn't useful, because it is. Don't want someone else to recover your private documents/pix, right?

If your using CCleaner drive wiper, it will be on C:/ & named some weird name like zZZZZZZZZZzzzzZzZzZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzz or whatever.

 

Shift + Del key them!

[dertrottel]

Thank you all for your fast and helpful replies! They include good hints for the use of CCleaner

 

Super Fasts post helped me most, because I could find all those files, even with their original file name in C:\$RECYCLE.BIN using my FTP program to search for them, because I know it shows ALL files that exist on my HDD. Having deleted the first file already gave back all lost space to me

The ZZZZZzzzzzZZZ.zzz files I mostly knew from my restoring program, those are mostly the broken ones ...

Still, that method was the best one and I'm really thankful you could help me not having to finally reinstall my entire computer system!