CCleaner for Mac - What is the Point?

[BassMac]

There have been a number of posts suggesting that CCleaner does not work with OS Sierra, and one poster has stated -

 

'CCleaner for mac is working fine for me. Be sure that your selection for secure deletion is "normal" and not "secure". Sierra no longer allows secure deletion since Apple now uses SSD drives in most of their machines and those drives do not support secure erase.'

 

But surely the point of CCleaner is to provide deletion that is more thorough than normal deletion, by doing multiple over-writes?  Is there therefor any advantage in using Cleaner?

 

Thanks 

 

[mta]

the history of CCleaner (initially known as Crap Cleaner) was to provide a one-stop-shop to remove unnecessary files from your PC.

instead of the user hunting down all the usual locations (temp files, leftover setup files, log files etc) and trying to identify any extra, unusual locations, Piriform created the utility program to do the work for you.

it has since grown into being able to do much more than that, but that is still it's core function, to remove crap files and therefore increase disk space and indirectly maybe improve performance and security.

 

if you are happy to do all the leg work yourself in removing the files you don't want, then Yes, there is no point in using CC.

[BassMac]

Thanks mta, point taken!

[Augeas]

As BM has posted elsewhere regarding multiple overwrites I think it's worth saying that:

 

Although you can run a secure erase on nand flash storage (SSD) it is absolutely pointless, as you cannot overwrite a nand flash page. A new page will be created to be 'overwritten', and the old page just deleted. Always run a normal erase on an SSD.

 

The deleted page will not be accessible by any but the most extreme methods applied immediately after deletion. I'm not familiar with Sierra, but if TRIM is enabled then in a very short time the deleted page will be emptied by the SSD garbage collector. The data on the deleted page can never be retrieved.

 

A normal erase on an SSD with TRIM - by CCleaner or otherwise - is equivalent to the most secure overwrite.