Drive Wipe with CCleaner, easy to recover w/ Recuva

[vjg1]

I know that this topic has been explored in the past, to some extent, but I felt the need to open a new thread with more details, and relating to the latest versions of the software.

 

OK, I have been using Ccleaner for many many years, and I just love the product.  I run it on all of my PCs, on a regular basis, and on an occasional basis, I select wipe free space witch takes considerably more time to run, but gives me extra piece of mind, at least I thought.

 

I am in the process of giving away a 32GB SanDisk micro SDHC UDH-1 card.  I had a couple hundred files on the card.  Using a Win7 pc, I deleted all of the files and reformatted the card.  I then ran ccleaner (latest version) selected tools-Drive Wiper to securely erase the contents of the drive. 

 

First Run:  I Chose:   Wipe: Entire Drive     Security: Complex Overwrite (7 Passes)

     Process Completed successfully - Ran Recuva, and was able to restore ALL of the files perfectly.

      Photos Open & Look Fine & MP3 Music Files Open & Play Fine

 

2nd Run:  I Chose:   Wipe: Free Space Only     Security: Complex Overwrite (7 Passes)

     Process again Completed successfully - Ran Recuva, and was still able to restore ALL of the files perfectly.

                 Again, All Photos Open & Look Fine & All MP3 Music Files Open and Play Fine

 

What am I missing here? 

 

I know that I can now use Recuva to securely delete the files that it was able to find and recover, but why is ccleaner not securely deleting them in the first place, after using both options (entire drive and free space)?

[Augeas]

First of all stop running seven-pass overwrites. It is foolish on an HDD, and on a flash card simply, well, crazy. NAND flash can only write onto a new page, so the first write will grab a new page, write on it, and alter the cluster mapping to the new page. The second write will grab another new page, and so on, So after seven writes you will have eight pages, one with the original data and seven others with the overwrite patterns, and the cluster address mapped to the last of the eight pages. And that's only one cluster. So one pass only please.

 

How long did the WFS take?

 

Is there an indicator light to show that the card is in use? Did it flash?

 

Did you run a normal scan or deep scan?

 

Did you scan for non-deleted files, and are the files you found classed as deleted or non-deleted?

 

I would leave the card connected to a power supply after you have run CC on it, for say 24 hrs. The card controller's garbage collector needs to collect those seven pages and set them to empty status, which can take some time.

[vjg1]

Augeas

 

Thanks for the fast reply.  I know 7 passes is way overkill. 

 

This is a 32gb SD drive.  The total time for the wipe to complete (with 7 passes keep in mind) was approx 2 hrs +/- on each run, once with wipe entire drive and once with wipe free space.  

 

The slot light was flashing...I was working at my other computer and watched the status progress intermittently byte by byte until it was complete.

 

I did all of this a couple of days ago, and the card has had power and not been removed from the from the reader slot since.

 

To recover with Recuva, I ran a deep scan

 

The only files that were on the SD card were jpgs and mp3s.  All were able to be recovered and look/play fine. 

 

Recuva Stats for every recovered file are as follows: 

Last Modified: Unknown,  State: Excellent,  Comment: No overwritten clusters detected.

 

Thanks Again!

Vince