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Wipe free space suddenly taking days, not hours ?


dsr

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I use CCleaner to wipe the free space on my 500 GB drive - settings below (usually 320GB of unused space remains on the drive to be wiped). The process takes around 3 hours to complete.

Over the past few days, after 10 hours wiping it claims there are still 19 hours left - and that time continually keeps climbing.  Any ideas ?


Wipe Alternate Data Streams
Wipe Cluster Tips
Wipe MTF free space
Secure File Deletion ( Simple ovewright one pass)
 

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If you're using Wipe Free Space too much that cause your hard disk to prematurely wear-out, it would only be beneficial to use if you were selling off your computer.

 

If you haven't rebooted in awhile give that a try, and it also run ChkDsk on the hard disk and hard disk partitions.

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If you're using Wipe Free Space too much that cause your hard disk to prematurely wear-out, it would only be beneficial to use if you were selling off your computer.

 

If you haven't rebooted in awhile give that a try, and it also run ChkDsk on the hard disk and hard disk partitions.

 I use it around once every six months, but as I change my laptop every 18 months or so, it only gets used in 'wipe free space mode' around three times.

 

I've tried rebooting, Chkdsk and nothing changes. I attempted again yesterday and after one hour it said '3 hours left', then after 3 hours, it said '28 hours left '!  The time never goes down, only up.

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You could try in Safe Mode to see if it works correctly and isn't a conflict with something else running on the system - such as antivirus software, some antivirus might not like a Wipe Free Space happening.

 

Still no luck I'm afraid.

 

I think the next step is to remove the drive from the laptop and connect it up to a caddy, plug into the USB port of my desktop and try from there.  Never had an issue with this before, so it must be something I've touched, altered or a program I've installed.

 

Cheers

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Any other ideas ?

 

I've tried unchecking the following, and different combinations :

 

Wipe Alternate Data Streams - both checked, and unchecked
Wipe Cluster Tips - both checked, and unchecked
Wipe MTF free space - both checked, and unchecked
Secure File Deletion ( Simple ovewright one pass) - both checked, and unchecked

 

 

Nothing seems to work, all that happens is the time gradually increases. After 4 hours it says 10 hours to go, then after 10 hours it says 19 hours to go. Following that it never really gets past 40% and then the program stops responding and hangs when you close it down.  Using recover I can get most files back...

 

... which brings me to point 2.  I noticed on my old desktop which was cleaned a week ago, recover found over 20,000 files from 2009 that I could recover.  So some idea of what's going on would be helpful.

 

I'm using Win 7 home premium, I've tried safe mode, checking for drive errors, switching of any anti-virus - all of which was never an issue in the past.

 

 

Cheers.

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Do you have monitoring turned on? (just clutching at straws)

 

Are you running any auto backup/system image type software ?

 

If it is 6 months since you last run Wipe Free Space and it worked okay then, perhaps a clean install of the CCleaner version from around that time might give an idea if it's the change in CCleaner or a change on your machine.

 

Support contact

https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general

or

support@ccleaner.com

 

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No monitoring, and nothing running in the background.

 

I've removed the drive and attached it to another desktop via USB, and tried an old version and the current version of CCleaner - problem still exists.

 

It is without doubt linked to the system drive. I repartitioned the laptop drive into two sections (the existing system and a new logical drive), CCleaner worked fine on the new logical drive, but was still an issue on the system drive.

 

I cant see it being an issue with CCleaner, something in the system drive most be causing the issue.   Very weird !

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