Secure deletion of flash cards with Ccleaner?

[mikeb]

Okay, let me start by saying I'm not sure if this is a Recuva (being too good) or a Ccleaner issue. I have a Sandisk Ultra II SD card for my camera and today I decided to try Recuva for the 1st time. First thing I did was format the card in the camera and then put it in my pc card reader and ran Recuva "deep scan". It found a few videos as if they had never been deleted. Awesome right?

 

Well, then I took a few pics and vids, put the card back my pc...ran ccleaner after going to "include" and selecting the location where the flash card is on my pc and I had ccleaner do 35 passes on it. I then check the card again with Recuva "deep scan" and all the vids show up!

 

So my question is what's going on? Ccleaner wen thru the motions of doing the 35 passes so this just surprised me!

 

Is it Recuva that's so darn great or Ccleaner that's not doing the adequate job?

 

How can we securely delete flash cards?

[Andavari]

35 passes is overkill that will eventually kill your flash card.

 

Did you use Wipe Free Space?

 

Or did you use Option->Include? If you used Option->Include no wonder it didn't do anything.

[mikeb]

35 passes is overkill that will eventually kill your flash card.

 

Did you use Wipe Free Space?

 

Or did you use Option->Include? If you used Option->Include no wonder it didn't do anything.

 

I've tried by Option->Include together with Wipe Free Space, Wipe Free Space alone, and Option->Include alone

 

And I still find files after running Recuva. Oh and I stepped it down to 3 passes. I ran 35 originally to see if it would slate the card.

 

In Analysis Complete, should there be a listing for "__ space wiped free"??

[marmite]

Mike have a look at this ... http://docs.piriform.com/recuva/troublesho...secure-deletion ... particularly point 2.

 

Have you actually successfully recovered any of these files?

[mikeb]

Have you actually successfully recovered any of these files?

 

Yes I have. So either I'm doing something wrong or Ccleaner is not doing its duty .

 

Btw, before I started this I updated CCleaner and got the latest Recuva.

[marmite]

Yes I have. So either I'm doing something wrong or Ccleaner is not doing its duty .

I've been trying this out on an old USB stick by copying pics over.

 

I've tried both i) "wipe" where I've deleted the pics, and ii) a combination of "wipe" and "include" where the pics are not deleted.

 

Generally, the files are beyond recovery. I say generally because I swear I went through one sequence where the files were recoverable; but I can't reproduce it. That may be because I used another program to securely wipe the free space and maybe that affected Recuva's behaviour (i.e. before I ran that program Recuva was able to recover some of the files it shouldn't have been able to). But unless I can reproduce that I have to say that I find ccleaner is doing its job.

 

Just one question Mike; to confirm that you have been setting the "Wipe Free Space" check box on the Windows tab (step 2 in Andavari's link), as well as in "Settings"? I missed it the first time around

[mikeb]

Just one question Mike; to confirm that you have been setting the "Wipe Free Space" check box on the Windows tab (step 2 in Andavari's link), as well as in "Settings"? I missed it the first time around

 

Doh!! That was my problem! I completely overlooked that "Wipe Free Space" check box in the Windows tab simply because I thought I was doing just that with the Option ->Settings ->wipe free space drives tick boxes! And apparently I'd been using that feature incorrectly all along! haha

 

The way I tested this time I took a few pics and vids then formatted the card in the camera then put the card in my pc and ran CCleaner WITHOUT having the folder in Options ->Include and then I ran Recuva and didn't see the files I did before. There was one large file that was around 485mb, the card is 512mb, that I exported and tried checking and apparently it was nothing. I don't know what the deal is with that file cause I didn't see it before. But anyway, yeah it worked. Thanks for the nudge in the right direction!