System Clean-up Tool Not Cleaning
Dear Reader, I have used the System Clean-up tool of Acronis True Image 2016 three times in succession to remove all the items that the tool should remove which includes an external USB3, NTFS formatted, WD 2TB HDD. The data destruction method is set to "Russian: GOST P50739-95" at all points where a data destruction method can be specified. Though the Recycle Bin, Temp folder, etc. do appear to be cleared, DiskInternals NTFS Recovery tool is still able to recover some 349GB of data from the external USB HDD, e.g. JPEG images and Excel spreadsheets, are still recoverable and the files viewable/readable. Is this a software failure, feature, bug or pilot error?
~A~


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Hi Steve, Thank you for your reply. I am not attempting to cleanse the entire disc, there are data on the disc I wish to retain and do not want to have to cleanse and restore all those data. Also, for reasons too lengthy to go into, I am not able to use the Disk Shredder utility that comes with Acronis True Image 2016. I am employing one of the features of the clean-up tool to "Clean up hard disk free space of any traces of information previously stored on it" to quote the User Guide. It comes under "Hard Disk Free Space" under "System Components" in System Clean-up. The link you provided does supply some extra information that the user guide did not (thanks) but it does not appear to resolve or explain the issue in this instance.
Sincerely
~A~
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~A~
I am trying to run some tests on a spare external USB drive using the System Clean-up tool and will post when I have some results to feedback.
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~A~
I tested the Acronis System Clean-up tool against a 100GB USB external drive (formatted as NTFS) as follows:
- Ran DiskInternals NTFS Recovery tool on the 100GB drive which then found 72.24GB of data that could be recovered by the tool - see screen images 1 & 2 attached below.
- Started Acronis System Clean-up tool and configured this to wipe the Free space only on the 100GB drive as shown in screen images 3 - 9
- Ran DiskInternals NTFS Recovery tool on the 100GB drive which then found only 1 item - 32KB that could potentially be recovered - see screen image 10.
This proves to me that the System Clean-up tool can clean all free space data when configured correctly to do so.
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Hello Steve, Thanks again, it does indeed appear that on your system the Clean-up tool works as expected. To assist my investigation into why the exact same procedure does not work on my system (I have now tried this with multiple external USB drives, though I have none smaller than 1TB, with multiple different destruction methods and each test failed) could you let me know: the versions of software titles you were using, were you using the Clean-up tool bundled into True Image or did you download the the stand-alone clean-up tool (from the link you provide "Cleanup Tool (ATIH 2010-2016)", which appears to describe a different tool to that bundled with True Image and appears to be used uninstall Acronis True Image), which OS did you run your test under?
Sincerely
~A~
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~A~
I was using the Acronis Clean-up tool as found with ATIH 2016 build 6571 in the more tools menu. The Properties for this shows as: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\TrueImageTools.exe" /system_cleanup - see screen shot of properties of the .exe file.
The link in my signature is for an Uninstall Cleanup tool intended purely to remove all traces of Acronis programs to enable a clean reinstall.
The test was run under Windows 10 64-bit fully upto date with all patches / fixes. Note: External drive & port were both USB 2.0 on my Dell Studio laptop.
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I know this doesn't help identify the exact cause, but FYI, Windows writes over free space automatically with command line tools:
http://www.howtogeek.com/137108/how-securely-overwrite-free-space-in-wi…
cipher /w:F
Where F is the letter of the drive you want to securely overwrite the free space on.
Alternatively, free tools like CCleaner also have this option. I've never used the Acronis method since these other options are just as easy to use, and one is built into Windows already and CCleaner is a staple in my OS builds as well.
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