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I used cipher /w:C to wipe the free disk space on my C drive. The first time I did it, it took say 2 days. Then two days later I used it, and it took 1.5 days. Then again I used it and it took 1 day. the next time it took 12 hours to run.

Is that normal? If it's not, what is going on?

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  • This is now the 5th question on the same topic. Why not ask us about what you are actually trying to achieve rather than more & more intricate ways you've thought to achieve it.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 31, 2021 at 17:55
  • @Tetsujin I want to know if data I deleted is gone forever. Then I realized that what i described in this post is what happened.... so I wanted to know if something went wrong
    – useraccount001
    Commented May 31, 2021 at 18:06
  • Also, this is not the fifth question on the "same" topic. Not sure how you can even come to that conclusion.
    – useraccount001
    Commented May 31, 2021 at 18:09
  • Sure it is. Your goal is to securely delete some data… it still appears to be, yet that's not what you're asking about. You're yak shaving [look it up]
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 31, 2021 at 18:12
  • If your goal was to prevent data recovery then you should have encrypted the drive from the start. If you still want to prevent absolutely any chance of recovery then take a large hammer to it. The rest is still yak shaving, no matter how you fight it. Had you been paying someone for their time doing this, or even if you valued your own, it the hammer & a new drive would have been considerably cheaper.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 31, 2021 at 18:31

1 Answer 1

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It appears to me from reading https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/cipher-exe-security-tool-for-the-encrypting-file-system-56c85edd-85cf-ac07-f2f7-ca2d35dab7e4 , that cipher, while acting below the file level acts above the block level and is only concerned with cleanup of the underlying filesystem rather then wiping all unused blocks on the disk - so it would seem that running multiple times could reduce how much work it has to do.

I posit that writing an arbitrary file to fill up the disk and then deleting that file would be a better way of ensuring data fragments in unused portions of the disk are unrecoverable.

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  • Thanks.. but when you say "is only concerned with cleanup of the underlying filesystem rather then wiping all unused blocks on the disk" by this, if I delete some files on my Windows system (say some music files) and then run cipher to erase the free space, it should all be gone, shouldn't it? Since you say cipher acts at least below the file level
    – useraccount001
    Commented Jun 1, 2021 at 5:44
  • Yes. It should be gone. (Assuming the filesystem is working as intended)
    – davidgo
    Commented Jun 1, 2021 at 5:56
  • @useraccount001 Thinking about this a bit more, Im not convinced that this kind of wiping will be totally effective on SSD's. SSDs were not a thing in Windows 2003, but as SSDs remap blocks beneath the interface level if the server is running SSD and you need to protect against adversaries who are willing to desolder chips to read them theyay be able to get traces of data.
    – davidgo
    Commented Jun 1, 2021 at 9:24
  • it's a HDD not an SSD, so I think it is fine
    – useraccount001
    Commented Jun 10, 2021 at 15:55

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