Solved Purging MFT

[LM2008]

I downloaded a program 2 months ago for purging the master file table. I read somewehere (but not from an expert) that it mess the hard drive and system, is it true? i have not encounter any corruption problem. I use it to delete entries or names of sensitive data.

 

[soho1]

What program?

 

[LM2008]

Directory Snoop

 

[seekermeister]

I'm wondering if it was Ccleaner? The reason is that I just ran it yesterday, and for the first time selected for it to wipe free space. As it neared completion, a warning dialog appeared, saying that my C: drive was 96% full. I opened O&O defragger, and it showed the drive covered with red fragmented blocks. When I closed Ccleaner and had O&O analyze the drive again, all of those extra red blocks had disappeared. I'm guessing that the program was locking those blocks until completion, but that is just a guess.

 

[soho1]

From what I read of it, you are only doing what any secure file eraser would do, that is, wiping out the filename from the directory. Normally, for security purposes, erasing the file contents is not enough, as you might want to remove the name of the file from the directory, which could otherwise be recovered by prying eyes. If you had wiped the names of non-deleted files, you would have nothing left. You only deleted the names of the files whose content you erased. You know what I mean?

 

[LM2008]

I have used Ccleaner too, but it seems it just wipe empty space. Directory Snoop remove the entries from the MFT so new data can be written. No problem with Ccleaner or Snoop for me, yet.

It is normal to say that is almost full, but it will normalize after finished.

Soho, so risky par of purging is if non deleted files are purged from mft? that was not explained where i read it before, thanks then.

 

[pincushion]

I downloaded a program 2 months ago for purging the master file table. I read somewehere (but not from an expert) that it mess the hard drive and system, is it true? i have not encounter any corruption problem. I use it to delete entries or names of sensitive data.

I've never found a problem due to purging the MFT and DS seems to do the job as well as other software - not an expert also but that is my experience.

:huh:

 

[LM2008]

Thanks for your reply.

 

[seekermeister]

Someone enlighten me please. I understand that a file remains, even after deletion, but I would have thought that the file's name would have been deleted from the MFT. If not, then I would have thought that it would be deleted after the file had been wiped. If neither of these are true, then how does having the name in the MFT impair performance in any fashion?

 

[LM2008]

If you delete the name of a give file, Windows will not find it on the disk, even if it's there because there's nothing pointing to it.

 

[seekermeister]

That I understand, but this discussion was about purging the MFT of names of files that are already deleted...isn't it? Therefore, if the file does not exist, what difference does it make if the MFT still contains it's name? After reading some on the MFT, I have learned that some very small files may only exist in the MFT, so I'm uncertain how this would apply to them, but I think that the majority of the files are external to it.

 

[cluberti]

That's correct - anything small enough (equal to or smaller than 1K) can be stored in the MFT itself rather than elsewhere on the filesystem to save space (the reference entry in the MFT and the file elsewhere on disk together will be larger than just the file in the MFT, most times).

 

[seekermeister]

Thanks for the confirmation, but it seems that my primary question is being side-stepped.

 

[pincushion]

That I understand, but this discussion was about purging the MFT of names of files that are already deleted...isn't it? Therefore, if the file does not exist, what difference does it make if the MFT still contains it's name? After reading some on the MFT, I have learned that some very small files may only exist in the MFT, so I'm uncertain how this would apply to them, but I think that the majority of the files are external to it.

I use CCleaner after most surfing sessions to clean up, mostly for maintenance purposes and also from a safety aspect deleting anything that my AV might have missed. I use the single overwrite option in CCleaner and it has the annoying habit of renaming overwritten files with ZZZZ.ZZZ increasing the number of Z's for each subsequent file. As you can imagine if you do a lot of surfing then these filenames can grow to enormous lengths so I purge occasionally to remove these hoping that this boosts the speed of CCleaner. Not sure if it does but it doesn't take long to do using DS. Other programs use random letters to rename files which seems more sensible to me.

:huh:

 

[LM2008]

Yead, creates a lot f zzzzz. I had a lot of them and purged them with Directory Snoop.