Data Destroyer
Section 9: Purging the free space

The free space on a disk consists of all the clusters (of sectors) on that disk which are not currently used by the operating system or for storing file data. The free space may contain a lot of data which was formerly the contents of files (or of older versions of current files). This data can be read by software which displays the contents of sectors.

Before purging the free space it is recommended to test the purge speed.

Clicking on the Purge free space button in Data Destroyer leads you through a process which is illustrated by the following screenshots:

This program will purge at most 20 GB of free space. If there is more than 2 GB of free space then more than one dummy file will be written (the number of dummy files is approximately 1 + the free space in GB divided by 2).

As noted at Testing purge speed, the estimate of the time required to purge the free space is not precise. The actual time could be significantly smaller or larger.

Pressing the F10 key twice at this point will interrupt the writing of the dummy file; you can then either cancel or resume.

Pressing the F10 key twice at this point will stop the purge of the dummy file (and cause it to be deleted); the file purge cannot be paused and resumed.

Next: Purging a disk
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