piriuser1

Agreed. Edited my post to point to yours. ERUNT is easier than the regedit method anyway, and it probably *is* safer.

You also could have just added those directories to the "include" list in CCleaner, and cleaned them that way.

You should stick to one defrag program. Often the optimization routines are not exactly the same. Using a second program may therefore undo some of the optimizations that the first program did.

Umm, you've misinterpreted that quote. 1. The program (MyDefrag) does not remove restore points. Shadow Copy does when it detects that a lot of files have moved, such as when you defrag your computer (using any program). So MS thinks you've made config/file changes, and deletes old restore points to make room for a new one. This happens with all defrag progs. AFAIA it would happen with Defraggler too, since it is MS internal routines that govern restore points. Someone can I'm sure correct me if I'm wrong. 2. The author of MyDefrag happens to also not believe in restore points. That's a separate issue, but it's not tied to his defrag'ing program (or any other).

I posted some suggestions in the Recuva forum related to secure deletion, here: http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=26744 Many/all are equally applicable to the CCLeaner "secure delete" option. (Note that some of these things are already done in CCleaner, and so might differ from what needs to be done in Recuva, which is where I posted this originally. Also, some of these things might already be done, but I might have thought otherwise because of errors in my testing. If I had to highlight one point for implementation, it would be to (if possible) move files to a randomly named directory off the root before they are securely deleted. That way their paths are not saved in the MFT even after the files themselves are securely deleted. A lot of information can be gained from seeing a path.

Hmm, just like "wipe free disk space" and "wipe MFT"? Seems you are a few versions too late with this comment.

Not when Opera crashes, it isn't. Then autosave.win contains the last open pages. That's probably why it's in there, being cleaned by CCleaner.

I'm no programmer, but if you used consistent filenames during wiping, and if you can poll deleted entries in the MFT (that is, pull information for deleted MFT entries) you could poll each entry in the MFT and ask it its filename. If the filename is a known "wiped" name or format, skip it. If not, wipe it. Again I'm no programmer, and this all seems a bit too complex for very little gain. My guess is that overwriting the MFT entries is probably pretty darn fast already.

1. I agree with others that defragmenting your registry is a waste of time. (Although I will note that resizing the registry hive - defragging it / whatever you want to call it - DOES remove the slack space in the hive that might still contain sensitive information.) That said, CCleaner does NOT need to do this. Go get NTREGOPT if you want. http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/ I think you can even export your registry as above, then re-import the whole thing using regedit. (Make a good backup of your whole drive before messing around with your registry, no matter which option you choose.) In fact, given your lack of knowledge about the registry, I'd suggest you not mess with your registry at all. You can cause serious problems. 2. CCleaner already does reg backup for its changes. If you want to backup your EXISTING registry, "run" regedit.exe. Select the top-most node (very top entry on the left). Go to file->export, make sure the button at the bottom is set to "ALL" and choose a file name. Done. No need for this feature to be in CCleaner, it's unnecessary. EDIT: In fact, just use ERUNT (as someone two posts down pointed out!). I already provided the link above. It probably is safer, as the fellow below noted.

Wipe MFT will wipe the unused MFT entries that point to old, deleted files on an NTFS drive. Wipe free space wipe the actual space on the hard disk that these files occupied. (And that are still there since deletion does not remove the data.) Separate note, for the person who asked why does it matter whether you do MFT then free space, or vice versa; my response is that if I personally had to choose between one or the other, I'd do the MFT first. That puts any recovery effort to the task of scanning my drive and manually putting the files back together, at least. It's not secure, but just a priority of mine.

When secure overwriting, consider the following suggestions: 1. renaming the file to random letters 2. renaming any directory the file is in, to random letters (or just notionally moving it to its own randomly-named dir off the root) 3. changing file size to 0 4. changing date to a fixed date Other programs offer some of these features. Since Recuva can secure overwrite, might as well do those things too. EDIT: I forgot to note that CCleaner does some of these things already (renames the file and directory to random combos of letters Z and ".") EDIT 2: Although note that if there are nested dirs, it appears only the upper-most one gets renamed.) - I also removed the name of a third party utility as unnecessary to this post.