Question What's the Best (and Safest) Way to Wipe Free HDD Space?

[accesscpu_]

I have a few internal storage drives I've been using for a while, and I'd like to ensure anything deleted over the last few years is completely wiped. I know they sit until they've been overwritten, and I've found files dating back to 2020 when scanning with programs like Disk Drill.

What's the best and most effective way to wipe all this while ensuring it doesn't harm my drives or hurt any of my existing files? I plan to do a backup of my files just in case anyway.

CCleaner has a "Wipe Free Space" option, but I've read it's not completely effective in overwriting every deleted file.

 

[TerryLaze]

CCleaner has a "Wipe Free Space" option, but I've read it's not completely effective in overwriting every deleted file.

Where did you read this and what exactly did they say?
Free space is free space and it will wipe it all, file fragments that are still on the disk are not free space and will also not show up as files and ccleaner will not touch them, those are different things though.

To make sure everything gets wiped you have to wipe everything and not just the free space.

 

[stonecarver]

https://hardwipe.en.uptodown.com/windows/download

This has great features where you can shred individual files or free space. But like TerryLaze said to deal with the best and worry free way where you can be 100% sure that drive is really clean is you 0 out the whole drive.

Yes than means you have to move what you want on to another drive , do the wipe than reuse the drive.

If I just shred or free space I always follow up with a data recovery with another program. If deleted items don't show back up then, than I know I'm good.

If drive is leaving me 100% whole drive wipe.

 

[USAFRet]

Sir, I need help, but my comment have been removed. I don't know why. I hope this comment still here, because I need help too. I'm
New here.

Please start a NEW thread for your particular situation.
Oh, I see you already have.