Erasing Clean Space Takes Days

[DenAdd]

Erasing my free space on my hard drive used to take hours.  Now it takes days.  What is wrong?

[nukecad]

Are you using Drive Wiper, or using Wipe Free Space in Custom Clean?

How many passes are your using? One pass is sufficent.

What size is your drive? A wipe of a TB drive will take longer than a GB sized drive.
How much free space is there?

What type of drive is it? HDD or SSD?

It's always a good idea to say what Windows version you have, and if you have a 3rd party AV installed.

AFAIK CCleaner hasn't changed it's free space wiping in any way.
(I used Drive Wiper a week ago on an external drive and it ran as expected in the time I expected).
If something has changed for you then you might want to run chkdsk to check the drive itself.

[DenAdd]

To the moderator, I use Drive Wiper.  I usually use 3 passes, but even if I use one pass it still takes much longer.  My hard drive is in the GB range.  I have no idea if it is HD or SSD.  I use Windows 10.  I've used 3 passes for a long time.  It takes a few hours, but that is ok.  Now it takes a couple of days.  I've done nothing different to my computer.  Thanks

DenAdd

[nukecad]

Firstly - If you can then backup your files to another disk.
It's always good to make regular backups.
That way if something goes wrong with the disc or computer (or if you get something like ransomware) you can easily get your files back from the backup disk.

For now lets assume that it's an HDD, we will see which it is shortly. (Step #3 below should tell you).

Have you defragmented the drive recently?

Use the built in Windows 'Defragment and Optimise Drives'.

1. Click the Windows icon to open the start menu and start typing the word Defragment.
2. A window will pop open from which you can select the 'Defragment and Optimise Drives', click it to run.
3. You will see buttons saying 'Analyse" and "Optimise" - If you drive is an SSD then "Analsze" will be greyed out and you will only have the option to "Optimise". (It also tells you in the main panel what type of drive it is).
4. In the main panel it will say what the status of the drive is, and if it's a HDD you can  see how many percent fragmented it is.
5. Click Optimise to defragment a HDD, it will take time to do that. (If it's a SSD it will only take seconds to Optimise, it's a different process).
6. Optional but recommended - I would then Restart the computer, that's clicking on Restart and not Shut down.

This screenshot shows both types of drive, (It says 'Never run' and '0%fragmented' for the HDD because I've only just plugged it in so would need an Analyse to find how fragmented it is).

 

Next:
I would use chkdsk to check the disk - and fix it if needed.
There are a few different ways to run chkdsk. This article takes you through the 2 main ways:
https://www.howtogeek.com/1033/guide-to-using-check-disk-in-windows-vista/

I'm not sure if you are familiar with using a command prompt so I suggest that you follow "How to Check a Disk from Windows".

After doing both of the above then that should have ruled out problems with the disk itself.

 

[DenAdd]

I think I found a solution to my problem.  I did not change the power settings on my computer, but somehow they got changed.  When my screen saver timed out, my computer went to sleep.  Of course, this halted all operations.  It paused my attempt to erase my free space.  I changed the settings back to where I had them before, and things are working just fine now.  Thanks for your help.

Dennis

[nukecad]

Good that you found what it was.
The computer going to sleep would tend to throw a spanner in the works.

This morning I actually wiped the free space on that 1TB HDD in my screenshot.
(it's the old OS drive from this laptop which I've since replaced with the SSD, I'd been thinking of doing it anyway).

There was just over 700 GB of freespace on it and it took CCleaner 2-1/2 hours to wipe that freespace.

That appears to be a limitation on how fast CCleaner can write to it, a Macrium Reflect image backup will write to it 5 or 6 times faster.
(ie. during the wipe CCleaner was writing at 80-90 Mbps, Macrium writes an image backup at 500-600 Mbps).