CCleaner system Optimizer

Everyone accumulates crap one way or the other especially if you are a heavy user of a computer. At times when you download stuff online, temporary files are left on your computer and the same goes for files you no longer have use for.

In today’s world, privacy and cleaning tools are rare especially if you are looking for freeware. But on both the commercial and freeware applications for cleaning up crap… CCleaner stands out! This small app allows one to search all crap that is in the system including temporary internet files and let you choose which you’ll like to get rid of. A cleaning tool that is definitely top of the range given its capabilities of not only cleaning, but even cleaning it safe! What I mean is that it will restore your privacy!

CCleaner has two options of either cleaning up with normal file deletion or through secure deletion (up to 35 passes!). Definitely a secure deletion will take more time especially if a lot of data is to be cleaned up.

The other special feature is that of wiping free disk space. Here’s the kick:
Assuming that you’ve been deleting on the normal ways, recovering data is usually easy given that some applications that can analyze your hard disk are available and will “gladly” recover whatever you’ve just “emptied” from the recycle bin. But secure deleting (which involves writing different patterns on the space that was occupied) is harder to recover although it also depends on the number of patterns. (Gutmann is the hardest to recover which involves 35 passes)

CCleaner has a feature that involves securing even the already free space in a given disk! The feature is found in Cleaner –> Advanced –> Wipe Free Space

This feature can take time (worse if you are using a secure deletion with many passes) and thus should be done when you are less busy.

You can even do this on another partition by going to Options –> Settings –> Wipe Free Disk Space and then you choose which partition or disk you’d like to clean.

One interesting feature is how it actually cleans the empty space: it writes data and then cleans it up using the preferred cleaning methods. Pretty interesting. So, don’t be surprised if you find that your disk is full when CCleaner is wiping your free disk space.