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Wipe Free Space


Gronxx

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Hi,

 

For what it's worth. Suggestions mainly for users who have multi hard drives and multi partitions:

 

1.

My impression (could be wrong) is that it is a good idea to wipe free space before using Defraggler. Testing it out, it seems to me that Defraggler is then doing a more comprehensive job, maybe because the cluster tips have been freed up?? Not sure. Run a few test comparisons, and see if you agree.

 

2.

Advanced > Wipe Free Space

? We need a reminder for subsequent runs. It is all too easy to forget that we wiped the free space on some huge partition, and then to have CCleaner start it all over again next time. (I'll put that in Suggestions.)

? Notes: If you uncheck the main Wipe Free Space box, that's good enough to prevent a re-run. You can leave the specified partition boxes (Drives C, G, H, for example) checked, and it won't run them.

 

3.

Sequence

? CCleaner does its standard assignments, then wipes your free space for every specified partition, and then comes back and wipes your MFT free space. Note that it does ALL the MFT free space requested AFTER it does ALL the free space on all the requested partitions.

 

4.

Wipe Free Space: which partition is in progress?

? At the moment, the best way I've discovered to know this is to run Alex Nolan's Drive Manager, and to compare the byte size. This is sloppy, but it works if you are wiping, say, Drives C, D, E, H, M, and Q, and you want to know where CCleaner is at the moment.

Drive Manager is freeware from http://www.alexnolan.net/software/driveman.htm (I highly recommend it for quite a few purposes.)

 

5.

Wipe MFT Free Space

? What it Does: In the New Technology File System (NTFS) used on Windows NT thru Windows 7, files or directories are described in the Master File Table. There is some discussion regarding wiping MFT free space with versus without a system restart, and traditionally the restart method was considered the better way to do things. Maybe that is dated with the new CCleaner system. In any case, I get the idea that wiping MFT free space may be the most delicate part of the operation. (But, heck, if you haven't wiped behind your ears, you're still not clean, so I give CCleaner the go-ahead. Live dangerously.)

? Keeping track of work in progress: At the moment, you can't. If you are processing a number of partitions, your progress in wiping MFT free space is blind. Of course, it takes longer to wipe MFT free space in a bigger partition, but that is your only clue. (I'll add that to my Suggestions, too.)

 

_________

 

Hope that helps. Maybe it raises more questions than it answers. I'm just feeling my way, so feel free to comment.

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