The "Freeola Customer Forum" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
The only one I really know of it McAfee QuickClean, but it's rather expensive and insists that you buy the entire McAfee Internet Scurity suite, so I'd rather use another one.
Basically, can anyone recommend one, because the McAfee one is the only one I've heard of. I'm not wanting it for the sake of securing my data or securely deleting sensitive information, although I'll probably use it for that too. What I actually want it for is that if you delete files normally through Windows and empty the recycle bin, you don't actually get much disk space back, because the data is actually still there - Windows just "forgets" that it is there and writes over it the next time it needs to use up more disk space. And I'm running out of disk space, so I need to get rid of a this stuff which is still on the drive, but not accessible because it's been "deleted".
Any suggestions please?
Edit: Must be free!
Ta very much!
Basically, can anyone recommend one, because the McAfee one is the only one I've heard of. I'm not wanting it for the sake of securing my data or securely deleting sensitive information, although I'll probably use it for that too. What I actually want it for is that if you delete files normally through Windows and empty the recycle bin, you don't actually get much disk space back, because the data is actually still there - Windows just "forgets" that it is there and writes over it the next time it needs to use up more disk space. And I'm running out of disk space, so I need to get rid of a this stuff which is still on the drive, but not accessible because it's been "deleted".
Any suggestions please?
Edit: Must be free!
Ta very much!
Page:
The only one I really know of it McAfee QuickClean, but it's rather expensive and insists that you buy the entire McAfee Internet Scurity suite, so I'd rather use another one.
Basically, can anyone recommend one, because the McAfee one is the only one I've heard of. I'm not wanting it for the sake of securing my data or securely deleting sensitive information, although I'll probably use it for that too. What I actually want it for is that if you delete files normally through Windows and empty the recycle bin, you don't actually get much disk space back, because the data is actually still there - Windows just "forgets" that it is there and writes over it the next time it needs to use up more disk space. And I'm running out of disk space, so I need to get rid of a this stuff which is still on the drive, but not accessible because it's been "deleted".
Any suggestions please?
Edit: Must be free!
Ta very much!
Basically, can anyone recommend one, because the McAfee one is the only one I've heard of. I'm not wanting it for the sake of securing my data or securely deleting sensitive information, although I'll probably use it for that too. What I actually want it for is that if you delete files normally through Windows and empty the recycle bin, you don't actually get much disk space back, because the data is actually still there - Windows just "forgets" that it is there and writes over it the next time it needs to use up more disk space. And I'm running out of disk space, so I need to get rid of a this stuff which is still on the drive, but not accessible because it's been "deleted".
Any suggestions please?
Edit: Must be free!
Ta very much!
Not sure where you've heard that from but its wrong. If a file is deleted, then all the space is recovered. If windows had such an inheritant flaw, it would be unusable.
However you might have a look at something like advanced windows care which will clean up windows' temporary folders/files. It doesnt permanently remove data though as you seem to want.
However you might have a look at something like advanced windows care which will clean up windows' temporary folders/files. It doesnt permanently remove data though as you seem to want.
I head that from the TV. I can't remember what program it was, but it was one of those which shows up criminals like The Real Hustle or Rogue Traders or something like that.
When a file is written to a harddrive its essentially store in 2 places, the data area and in the file system. The data area contains the actual file. Whats stored in the file system is like a record of the space the file is occupying on the drive.
When a file is deleted normally all that happens is that the record in the file system is flagged as free. Its the quickest method and it gives you ALL the space back. Its not physically removed though, but it will eventually get overwritten. This is why you can recover deleted files. Presumably what Rogue Traders/Real Hustle highlighted is the fact that unscrupulous people might decide to go looking for recently deleted files with sensitive information.
When a file is deleted normally all that happens is that the record in the file system is flagged as free. Its the quickest method and it gives you ALL the space back. Its not physically removed though, but it will eventually get overwritten. This is why you can recover deleted files. Presumably what Rogue Traders/Real Hustle highlighted is the fact that unscrupulous people might decide to go looking for recently deleted files with sensitive information.
I think that if you simply defragment after deleting things then it has the same affect as secure deletion anyway...
"dsdel" is free i think
pb wrote:
> I think that if you simply defragment after deleting things then
> it has the same affect as secure deletion anyway...
Not really, at least it offers no guarantees. You -might- erase some of the data but it'll depend upon the amount of free space, how fragmented your drive is etc..
> I think that if you simply defragment after deleting things then
> it has the same affect as secure deletion anyway...
Not really, at least it offers no guarantees. You -might- erase some of the data but it'll depend upon the amount of free space, how fragmented your drive is etc..
That's another thing - defragmenting. When I run Disk Defragmenter (the one that comes with Windows, I'm using XP Home SP2), there is a massive chunk of red ("fragmented files") to the right of the graphic, which never defragments, and just sits there. Not sure what that is.
Short answer, windows defrag is rubbish. :) Theres several reasons it might not be defragmenting that section, might be diskspace issues or the files are in use in some way. It also might be the crappy logic the defrag util uses thinking it doesnt need to be defragmented.
Do you know of any good defragmenters that run at boot then, like, before Windows boots? It seems like that would be the best time to defrag, because more files are made read-only and therefore Windows refuses to defrag them when Windows is actually running.
Page: