Drive Wiper only does one pass

[trinu]

Even if I have it set to do 3 passes (or 7), the drive wiper only completes one of those passes; once the first pass is done, it sas "the drive wipe has been completed successfully."

[DennisD]

Hi trinu, and welcome to the forum.

 

That's normal. Probably a decision by the developers to protect folk from prematurely wearing out a drive, and based upon the common belief that any more than one secure overwrite is enough for normal purposes.

 

I don't want to open a debate on that, just explaining that the one pass is CCleaner operating normally.

[Super Fast]

This is interesting, & I may take time to test on my machine to see what is happening.

 

I have a few questions I would like to ask you before we begin.

I mostly have used single pass wipe, so I don't have extensive familiarity with the others as of yet.

_____

 

How are you able to tell Drive Wiper is doing 1 pass (as opposed to 7)?

 

1) Does it take 7x less to do the pass? Or have you timed it?

2) Did prior versions state each time they completed a pass?

 

What I am trying to get at, is how do you know they did not make it complete all 7 passes before saying complete?

_____

 

Your question is interesting enough that I may test a small 2 GB flash disk (or partition) for the purpose of timing 1 vs 35 passes to see whether it is "skipping" passes, or waiting till it does them all before throwing up the complete message.

[Alan_B]

I use the professional version of HDS which amongst many other things will show running totals of reads and writes to drives,

and many other more exotic measurements also.

The free Trial version is somewhat restricted, but will probably show you read/write totals

http://www.hdsentinel.com/store.php

[DennisD]

I think I'll rephrase that answer to you trinu.

 

The drive wiper only makes one visible pass from what I've ever been able to make out while using it.

 

I don't technically know enough about drive wiping to explain as to whether or how it will overwrite more than once during that single pass.

 

Apologies for confusing with a wrong assumption there. Senior moment I think. Maybe someone else can explain the how.

[trinu]

This is interesting, & I may take time to test on my machine to see what is happening.

 

I have a few questions I would like to ask you before we begin.

I mostly have used single pass wipe, so I don't have extensive familiarity with the others as of yet.

_____

 

How are you able to tell Drive Wiper is doing 1 pass (as opposed to 7)?

 

1) Does it take 7x less to do the pass? Or have you timed it?

2) Did prior versions state each time they completed a pass?

 

What I am trying to get at, is how do you know they did not make it complete all 7 passes before saying complete?

_____

 

Your question is interesting enough that I may test a small 2 GB flash disk (or partition) for the purpose of timing 1 vs 35 passes to see whether it is "skipping" passes, or waiting till it does them all before throwing up the complete message.

I was suspicious when it jumped from 33% (with it set to 3 passes) to saying it was complete, so I tested it with a virtual drive, which let me look at how many bytes had been written. I only have this problem on my desktop; on the laptop, CCleaner does all the passes.

[Alan_B]

What version of Windows and what Service Packs on your two computers please.

[trinu]

Both use windows 7 64-bit (Home premium on the laptop; Ultimate on the desktop), and are fully up to date.

[Alan_B]

All I can think of right now is that you probably have different HDD (2.5 inch and 3.5 inch) and PROBABLY different firmware in each.

 

It is the HDD firmware that is responsible for utilisation of NCQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing

 

Is it possible that the Desktop NCQ is able to "bundle" the second and third pass over-writes into the very first over-write ?

 

Obviously all bets are off if you have an SSD.

[kroozer]

Even if I have it set to do 3 passes (or 7), the drive wiper only completes one of those passes; once the first pass is done, it sas "the drive wipe has been completed successfully."

 

Piriform repaired this bug in Jan-Feb. http://forum.pirifor...showtopic=35073, post #9.

 

For grins I now ran a test -- 44.4GB free on a Win7 x64 box. 1-pass was 100% completed in 0:6:48.

 

I aborted a 3-pass at ~33% 0:13:00. Finishing the multiple wipe was pointless, cos the time proves a 3-pass is certainly getting more wiping than 1-pass, on my pc.

 

Edit: btw, UTF-8 is not currently working on the forum. We'll be patient.

[trinu]

Piriform repaired this bug in Jan-Feb. http://forum.pirifor...showtopic=35073, post #9.

 

For grins I now ran a test -- 44.4GB free on a Win7 x64 box. 1-pass was 100% completed in 0:6:48.

 

I aborted a 3-pass at ~33% 0:13:00. Finishing the multiple wipe was pointless, cos the time proves a 3-pass is certainly getting more wiping than 1-pass, on my pc.

 

Edit: btw, UTF-8 is not currently working on the forum. We'll be patient.

I'm using the latest version of CCleaner, and I'm still facing this issue. Alan, I didn't have this issue a few months ago, and I haven't changed the drive's firmware. I'm using a hard disk, not SSD.

[Super Fast]

Does it work if you revert to an older CCleaner version from Filehippo (just for testing)?

 

Or if you use portable CCleaner?

[Alan_B]

Alan, I didn't have this issue a few months ago, and I haven't changed the drive's firmware.

I was not aware that you had tested this previously.

I was assuming that the firmware embedded within your 2.5 inch HDD mechanism could be very different from that in the 3.5 inch HDD,

I was not thinking (nor suggesting) that you changed the firmware yourself.

[Augeas]

A few musings - all the multiple-pass overwrites end with a pass of zeroes, so it is difficult to tell how many passes have been written. I once ran a 35-pass overwrite on a flash stick and cancelled it halfway, it left the file overwritten with (apparently) random data, so it was writing multiple times. Fewer overwrites are difficult to catch this way as they are so fast.

 

Of course one overwrite is all you need, as has been discussed to death here previously (so please don't discuss here, look up all the old stuff).

 

We don't know how multiple overwrites are done. Are the writes flushed individually? Is the volume checkpointed after each write? I dunno, I'm quite happy with one pass when I need it, then I don't have to worry about all the other aspects.

[kroozer]

I'm using the latest version of CCleaner, and I'm still facing this issue.

 

There's always the chance your program is corrupt. A total uninstall, then install anew may fix your issue. That fixed it for me once, and also for others.