CCleaner falsely recognises my HDD as an SSD so refuses to let me securely wipe it

[theonefoster]

Under Tools -> Drive Wiper, my D: drive is showing as an SSD. In actuality it is a Windows "Storage Space" (essentially a RAID array) consisting of three physical hard drives. I want to be able to wipe the drives securely using a 3-pass wipe, but CCleaner warns me that even a single pass is "NOT recommended as it can prematurely wear out the drive" or similar, which only applies to SSDs. It refuses to let me do a 3-pass wipe.

 

This has been pointed out before (see below) and a fix was apparently due a year ago. I have the latest version as at 14/06/18. I'm using Windows 10 64-bit home. I tried running the 32-bit version of CCleaner (including renaming the 64-bit version) but got the same outcome.

 

I wouldn't mind having to click through 12 different warnings telling me that I definitely shouldn't do the wipe since CC thinks it's an SSD. But locking out the functionality entirely is silly given that it can be wrong about the drive type.

 

 

[theonefoster]

Is there any response to this? Is this expected behaviour? Or a bug? 

[Gthomas]

4 hours ago, theonefoster said:

Is there any response to this? Is this expected behaviour? Or a bug? 

This a long standing bug and Piriform does absolutely nothing to fix it, along with a long list of other issues.

End of an era approaches.. :-(

[mta]

can't refute any of the above points, sadly.

yes, CCleaner, Speccy and Defraggler have for at least 2 years now misreported HDD's as SSD's and vice-versa.
in true expedited programming and testing, with the latest release of all those, some users are saying the opposite now occurs.
where they were previously reported correctly, they now are falsely reported.  Classic!

[theonefoster]

I'm not really so bothered about the mis-reporting of the drives. It could be considered a cosmetic bug if it didn't then block me from wiping my HDD because it thinks it's an SSD.

 

I don't care how many warnings I have to click through or checkboxes I have to tick to confirm I agree to the risks. In this situation the "risks" of wiping the drive (i.e. prematurely aging the SSD) are irrelevant because it isn't an SSD. Artificially limiting the program because of an incorrect premise (that the drive is an SSD) is silly. Make me click through 5 warnings and checkboxes, I don't care. Phrase the warnings to make it sound scary to users who don't understand - I don't care. But I do understand and I want to securely wipe my drive, and at the moment that option simply isn't available to me via CCleaner, and for no good reason.