Very Nervous Newbie-CCleaner for Mac v1.03.131

[Angie Stone]

Man is it ever hard to find info for the MAC version of CCleaner. There are no instructions anywhere, whatsoever for MAC. I've found plenty of forum discussions, but they're all for Windows, the big tip-off being discussions regarding the registry cleaner. That ain't MAC. I'm running version 1.03.131. Main, first, most important question: What will happen if I cancel the "Erase Freespace" operation? After doing a full backup, I ran "Erase Free Space". I started it at 8:00 am. It's now 2:30 pm. If it takes several hours, I'm cool with that, but I'm nervous that I could be sitting here idle while it's erasing stuff it shouldn't. I also want to know if I can use my laptop (Macbook OSX 10.6.8) while the program is running. Probably would slow it down considerably, huh? I just found out there's a later version of CCleaner for Mac, and would just as soon cancel this erase operation, and get the newer version. That is, if cancelling it will still leave me with an operating system. I sure hope I haven't gotten myself in trouble. Thank you.

erase.tiff

[Super Fast]

Although you may be able to safely stop the erase operation, what would be the harm of allowing it to complete & updating afterwards?

 

Sure, it may take awhile as you have selected 7 passes & it must erase each part of the drive 7 times.

I would dare say that 1 pass would probably be sufficient & much faster, or if you were paranoid, even 3 passes. 7 seems a bit overkill.

 

If it were me, I'd wait till it finishes, then do the update. Then consider if I needed 7 passes, or if 1 is sufficient?

[Angie Stone]

Geez, I don't even know what 7 passes means, but I selected it because "Zero Out" sounded so harsh. Seriously. I lost my bravery back in my PC years, and now I trust almost nothing. Anyway, it did finish eventually, and all seems well. I forgot to take a screen shot prior to running the Erase, so I don't know how much space I gained, but it had been getting wonky, so I thought I should do some maintenance. Thank you so much for your help.

[Guest Keatah]

1 pass is sufficient. Anything more and you're just putting mileage on the disk.

[Alan_B]

I forgot to take a screen shot prior to running the Erase, so I don't know how much space I gained

I cannot remember an easier question to answer.

After what lasted many hours you gained precisely zero bytes.

 

When you delete a file you gain more free space BUT THE ORIGINAL DATA REMAINS and could be accessed against your will.

The purpose of Free Space Erase is to corrupt all that original and now deleted data so your private stuff cannot be retrieved.