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Wipe with CCleaner then recover with Recuva? (newbie question)


chad_grimaud

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Hi everyone, I recently installed CCleaner on my office computer for the purpose of using the "wipe free space" feature to permanently delete all of my deleted files. I tested it out with 3 passes. Then after that, I attempted to recover the files using Recuva (because if they were recoverable, then I would know that the wipe was not successful). So this process prompted a couple of questions:

 

1) Recuva said it found 0 files, with 128000 ignored. What is this? Did it actually find 128000 files and why is it ignoring them? Does this mean there are that many deleted files, but that they are just unrecoverable so there is no point listing them?

 

2) Am I correctly using the "wipe free space" tool for my purpose? (meaning, is "deleting already-deleted files so that they are unrecoverable" what this tool is designed to do?)

 

3) I was a little confused about the wipe free space tool, because on the CCleaner website it says that this tool does not permanently delete files that have already been erased from the recycle bin. So I didn't fully understand this, because I always empty the recycle bin daily, so there is nothing in it (or sometimes I just shift-delete files). My goal is to permanently eliminate these files that have already been deleted and removed from the recycle bin. I don't care about the recycle bin and I have no files in it. Can someone clarify exactly what the CCleaner faq is trying to say in regards to the Recycle Bin?

 

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it :D

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0) Reduce the amount of wind turbines we need by running one pass, any more is unnecessary,

 

1) Switch to Advanced Mode, if you're not already, and check boxes 1, 2, 3 and 5 in Options/Actions.

 

2) WFS will overwrite all the free clusters on your drive, so yes it overwrites previously deleted files. It doesn't touch the recycler, as files in there haven't been deleted, but when the recycler is emptied it's contents become deleted files and are overwritten with the rest of the files.

 

3) It's too late for me to poke about in the docs, but I believe there is a confusing sentence there that has been mentioned a few times before. Cat and paste it and I, or someone else, will look at it tomorrow.

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Thanks for the reply. Are you referring to the Options screen that starts with "show initial results in detailed view" etc? I didn't see a "advanced mode" option so I assumed you meant the Advanced tab under the options/settings menu.

 

If more than 1 pass is unnecessary why does CCleaner even include those options? I was under the impression that the more passes, the more un-recoverable the files would be.

 

I searched around about the recycle bin and I seem to have gathered that it does wipe anything that has been removed from the recycle bin, and anything that has been shift-deleted, but NOT files that are currently in the recycle bin. So this is fine, this is how I would expect it to function. If I'm getting anything wrong please let me know.

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In Recuva if you run the wizard there's a box in the top r/h that says Switch to Advanced Mode.

 

Why more than one pass? Marketing reasons I guess, and that so many believe that multi passes must be better. Show me a way to retrieve what was written three times before last and I'll eat my hat.

 

I think that you have the recycler actions correct.

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