ccleaner wipe tech questions

[anon12010]

Hi, Jamin4u;

 

Thank you for your response.

While doing what you suggested, I noticed "Wipe Free Space drives". What is done by this and what am I supposed to do to have it done?

 

 

 

The "Wipe Free Space" option fills up all of the "empty" space on your hard drive with random data. Say I have a 160GB hard drive (usable space 148GB), I am using 60.00GB of data. CCleaner will fill up the remaining 88GB with junk. By doing this it writes over files that were not securely deleted. I know that much. However, I have a question of my own, related to this topic, so I hope you don't mind if i piggyback off your question.

 

 

WIPE FREE SPACE TECHNICAL QUESTIONS.

How does the Wipe Free Space work? In more specific terms, I have two questions. If my information is incorrect, please let me know.

 

"When you have applied the secure deletetion setting to 7 Passes, (or other), does using the 'Wipe Free Space' option actually overwrite the empty disk space 7 times?"

 

"I have heard in the past from data recovery 'specialists' that by examining the platters of the drive, data that has been overwritten can be recovered. It keeps some sort of short term magnetic history. This is the reason for multi-pass erasing in the first place. I have also heard that a 160GB drive, while you only see 148GB inside of windows, there is a lot of free space (say another 4-40 GB) that can only be seen by the hard drive controller. When a hard drive notices a bad sector, it allocates sectors from the unused 'spare' space, and puts a block over the bad sector, so that it is not written again. This keeps a disk in Tip-Top shape, and hereby making it last longer with fewer errors. Does this mean that if a file with sensitive information is written to a sector that the drive deems bad, when it marks the bad sector, the file could still potentially be recovered? Since it has been moved to and unusable area of the disk, utilities such as CCleaner's 'Wipe Free Space' are not going to touch this sector. Is this correct? Should we worry about this?"

[Augeas]

'The "Wipe Free Space" option fills up all of the "empty" space on your hard drive with random data.'

 

CC uses one pass of zeroes. As far as I know.

 

'Does using the 'Wipe Free Space' option actually overwrite the empty disk space 7 times?'

 

No. The Secure Delete option applies to files and folders. The Wipe Free Space option invokes wfs, and does not use whatever option is chosen for securely deleting files. As far as I know.

 

'Data that has been overwritten can be recovered?'

 

There is no evidence that this can be done, or has ever been done, in any practical way. The idea was mooted in the 1990's on Winchester disks.

 

'Utilities such as CCleaner's 'Wipe Free Space' are not going to touch this (bad) sector.'

 

I don't believe that CC accesses bad sectors.

 

'Should we worry about this?'

 

That's up to you, but I don't.

[anon12010]

~ See Previous Post ~

 

Thanks for the information.

[sddds]

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