Wipe MFT Free space always active

[Edward5932]

In the options menu under the settings, i unchecked the box for wipe MFT free space.  However, when I wipe free space in the tools, drive wiper menu, it always wipes the MFT free space.  It takes a long time to wipe the MFT free space, which is why i want to skip this step.  Any suggestions?  Should I delete the program and re-install?  I have a laptop with windows 7 home edition 64 bit, 8 GB RAM, intel core2 duo CPU 1.4 GHz, with Ccleaner professional v 5.63.7540.

Many Thanks,

Edward

[Andavari]

Drive Wiper always wipes the MFT free space. Whereas if you instead use Wipe Free Space you have to select it.

So not really a bug, it's always been like that.

[Edward5932]

I am using Wipe Free Space.  It always wipes MFT free space, even when this option is not checked.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Edward5932

[Augeas]

You said you were using Drive Wiper. Wipe Free Space in Cleaner/Widows/Advanced does not wipe the MFT unless that option is checked in Options/Settings.

[Edward5932]

This is exactly the problem.  Wipe Free Space DOES wipe the MFT when this option is unchecked in Options/Settings.

[Andavari]

The newer way of doing it by going into 'Tools > Drive Wiper' and initiating a Wipe Free Space from there in particular will always also wipe the MFT free space.

The old original way of doing it by going into 'Options > Settings', selecting Wipe Free Space drives you have to select "Wipe MFT Free Space", it's disabled/unticked by default. Then it has to be initiated by going back to the main GUI area, selecting the Windows (tab) and then scrolling down to 'Advanced > Wipe Free Space' which can be right-clicked to start the wipe.

I have just tested this using the old origninal way of using "Wipe Free Space" with "Wipe MFT Free Space" unticked/disabled using CCleaner v5.63.7540 (newest version available) and it works how it's supposed to, i.e.; it's not using Wipe MFT Free Space. If it were wiping the MFT free space would be the first thing it does, but it isn't doing that on my system.

[Augeas]

7 hours ago, Edward5932 said:

This is exactly the problem.  Wipe Free Space DOES wipe the MFT when this option is unchecked in Options/Settings.

 

I think you may be confusing the two processes, which are entirely separate. Unchecking the Wipe MFT box in Options/Settings only applies when you run Wipe Free Space from Cleaner/Windows/Advanced. Using Drive Wiper will wipe the MFT whatever is in the Options/Settings box.

If you don't want the MFT to be wiped then use WFS from Cleaner/Windows/Advanced.

[nukecad]

Pictures tell a thousand words.

This will always wipe MFT Free space:

This should only wipe MFT Free space if the option to do so has been ticked in Options>Settings

 

[Edward5932]

Ok, many thanks for the graphic explanation.  I understand now that launching Wipe Free space from the different menus does different things.  It may be useful for the software developers to remove the ambiguity.  Specifically:

(1) When wiping free space in the CustomClean/advanced/WipeFreeSpace, it will or will not wipe MFT free space depending on the setting in Options/Settings MFT checkbox.  However, will it also follow the settings in Options/Settings for the other choices (normal/secure, number of passes, alternate data streams, cluster tips)?

(2) When wiping free space in Tools/DriveWiper, it will automatically wipe MFT free space.  But, will it wipe also alternate data streams and cluster tips?  How many passes? Normal or secure?

It's unfortunate that there is no detailed user manual for this product.  However, this seems to be the norm in the software industry.  The company that owns this product also sells Avast antivirus products, which I also use.  However, there is no detailed user manual for this product either.  Perhaps the software developers will clear up the ambiguity with the wipe free space issue in the user interface.  I'm sure 99% of people using this product have no idea about this, and click options without knowing the details of their wiping operation that they selected.  Maybe someone will also write a detailed user manual.  It will be a good reference guide, and only needs to be written once.

Thanks again for your patience.

 

[Augeas]

1) the other settings you mention do not apply to WFS, they are in the section for Secure Delete, so the answer is no. With native WFS you get one pass of zeroes.

2) Wiping Alternate data streams and cluster tips are irrelevant in WFS, whether using Drive Wiper or the native WFS. The action of wiping MFT records is done under the control of NTFS, but effectively the whole record is wiped, by which I mean overwritten. Wipe MFT uses a single overwrite. Normal or secure doesn't make sense, the data is being overwritten.

Yes, the documentation could be better. No, I am not going to do it.

 

 

[nukecad]

For what it's worth the CCleaner documentation can be found here:
https://www.ccleaner.com/docs/ccleaner

However it's somewhat out of date and doesn't reflect the many changes to CCleaner that have been made over the last few years.

We have been promised that they are working on updating all of the Piriform documentation, but I don't think that anyone is holding their breath waiting for it to happen.

[Andavari]

4 hours ago, nukecad said:

We have been promised that they are working on updating all of the Piriform documentation, but I don't think that anyone is holding their breath waiting for it to happen.

CCleaner is currently too much of a moving target in my opinion for them to update it, once they stop reinventing it and start once more to primarily focus on removing bugs and making sure it cleans the newest changes in Windows and browsers then maybe it will be viable.

It is peculiar having the "old legacy" Wipe Free Space and newer Drive Wiper in there, and more peculiar that they never condensed everything into just Drive Wiper -- although I've personally never used Drive Wiper.

[Ajvar]

This option is helluva misleading in my opinion. From my standpoint, when I want only to wipe free space in MFT file instead of wasting time on actual zeroing every cluster of my hard drive, I am looking at a checkbox "Wipe only in MFT" which (or close enough) I found named as "Wipe MFT Free Space". Now I couldn't understand why would it take almost an hour to clean only MFT but I let it pass one or two last times.

 

This time seeing 2+ hours I had to dig deep into Internet to see that now if you choose this option it actually does the opposite of my expectation! I am quite sure that in the past many years ago I had to set checkbox to dramatically increase the speed of empty space wiping, not uncheck it.

Also it doesn't help that program doesn't tell you that it actually is zeroing every single cluster and just shows expected time instead of "Wiped XGB out of XX GB of free space". Please, consider adding a change which would tell user what actually is going on and a tip how to set it right.

 

P.S. Oh, the funny part is that after I unchecked that checkbox and ran Cleanup with wiping free space I see that it did not do the job because next files I copy to the drive do not get written from the first empty cluster block but instead of somewhere from the middle of empty space. Where is that simple option to quickly "wipe" free space in MFT only so that it would believe those free blocks are actually empty but not wasting time for actual unnesessary wipe of every cluster?

Edited May 23, 2021 by Ajvar

[nukecad]

The intention of wiping the free space is to make previously deleted files unrecoverable by standard file recovery software.

Wiping just the MFT would not do that.

The MFT is simply a list of where the data for a particular file is on the disk, so wiping it just wipes that list and the file data itself may still be recoverable.

If you just wipe freespace without wiping the MFT then the filenames may still be recovered from the MFT but the data that was in those files can't be recovered.
If you just wipe the MFT then you won't be able to recover the filenames but could still recover the file data itself.

Wiping the MFT is an additional option so that as well as wiping the file data itself the list of where that data used to be, and what the file used to be called, also gets wiped.

PS. Wiping the freespace has no function other that 'sanitising' a disc so that deleted files can't later be recovered from it.
Unless you are selling or otherwise passing the disc/computer on to someone else wiping the free space is not needed.

[Andavari]

7 hours ago, nukecad said:

Unless you are selling or otherwise passing the disc/computer on to someone else wiping the free space is not needed.

That's the best advice in this now one year old topic. I think too many are hung up on WFS as perhaps a privacy aspect when in reality it's a tool best used when getting rid of a hard disk or PC.