Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: REDACTED on April 29, 2016, 07:33:24 PM
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Hi,
I am in need of your help. I don't know exactly how this happened.
I used the Avast Data Shredder - Clean Free Space On A Disk on my C> Drive late last night.
My purpose was to clean my free space - I had 139GB Free Space out of 391GB.
When I woke up, my free hard drive space was reduced to 500MB.
The data shredder was stuck at 93% and wasn't moving so I stopped it.
I used CCleaner and Avast CleanUp to recover 5GB of Free space.
I am still out 134GB of free hard drive space.
I use Window 7.
Avast Support checked my avast software with their software and all is well.
I hope someone can help.
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I'd use a program that displays your hard drive content to see if there is a huge file of set of files somewhere that Avast probably made to fill the empty space and failed to delete.
For instance: Space Monger. Gives you a graphical representation of your folders based on their sizes. A 134 Gig file or set should really stand out. You can then delete it manually.
For wiping of free space, or zeroing it out I use SDelete.
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/HI,
The Avast File Shredder/Data Shredder - clean drive - has caused me a lot of problems. Fortunately, with the help of the internet, I was able to find a solution.
The data shredder reduced my hard drive space of 130gb to 500mb on 4/29/2016 - See 5/1/2016 text file.
Then after I found the issue, I choose to do it again thinking the reason I had the issue was that of the lack of hard drive space - it reduced my hard drive from 296gb to 0gb overnight.
In both of these situations, the Avast Data Shredder was at 93%, and nothing was happening so I stopped it.
I have used other shredders before with no issues.
Avast support has denied there is an issue with the software.
I hope someone from Avast would take a good look at the problem and find a solution.
CCleaner Data Analyzer was a great help in finding the large data files which were hidden.
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Reported to avast.
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Thanks, do you know if there have been any answers. I haven't gotten any yet.
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Thanks, do you know if there have been any answers. I haven't gotten any yet.
The report is about your post here, so responses should be in this topic. You should get a notification when new posts are made to your topic.
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Hello DavidYen,
thanks for reporting this and sorry for the troubles. Indeed shredder creates these files in order to completely overwrite all ranges of the disk (in case of the free disk space cleanup).
It should also (of course) automatically deleted when completed (or terminated during the process - as happened in your case).
I've created a ticket AV-10085 in our ticketing system and one of my colleagues will look into this soon. We will also add an improvement into the initial phase of the cleanup to search and destroy all (possible) left-overs from previous runs (in case it will ever happen again).
Thanks again.
To you specific issue - have you been able to successfully salvage all your disk space already (by deleting these files) or do you need help identifying and deleting them as well?
Lukas.
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HI,
Yes, I have successfully identified all the files that needed to be deleted. I had to resort to another third-party tool.
CCleaner - Data Analysis.
My other question is why did it also happen the second time I ran it:
I had close to an empty hard drive with plenty of spaces.
296gb free space out of 391gb HDD
The shredder stopped at 93% leaving me 0gb space.
Isn't that more than enough free space?
Also, why aren't lots of other people having this issue? It appears to be isolated instance.
Thanks.
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Hi,
thanks for report this issue, and yes, this is rare issue. But sometimes appears.
It is more interesting for us, becasue you write it happens to you two times.
We are investigating this bug.
Could you please use Avast Suport tool and send a support package to us?
Or already you did it? If yes, we need the support package ID, which this tool generate.
thx
Vladimir
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I don't really remember. The support person ran the tool on my laptop and said all is fine. Its been a few weeks already. Will the data still be on my laptop
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The support person ran the tool on my laptop and said all is fine.
Do you mean you called the support phone number ?
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I have the same problem as David the trouble is I not very computer savvy so things have to be explained a bit simpler and a bit slower. As I understand your messages there are some sort of help I can download to identify where 967Gb have been filled, I have sent a message to Lucas and now awaitig a reply. Any other help would be appreciated.
Adrian.
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I also have this problem. I tried data shredder about a month ago. same thing happened so i stopped it. Tried it again last night -it is (and has been for hours) stuck at 90% of "Cleaning MFT" Adding my voice here cause it's been a problem for awhile now and Avast doesn't seem to be taking care of it.
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Update to the latest version (12.1.2272): https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=187663.0
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Update to the latest version (12.1.2272): https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=187663.0
Running current version before starting D.Shred ...still sitting at 90% btw lol
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Running current version before starting D.Shred ...still sitting at 90% btw lol
Might be a bug, wait for one of the devs and/or submit a ticket: https://support.avast.com/support/tickets/new
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Thx for lookin into this with me btw.
I used Ccleaner Disk Analyzer tool and found lots of files that have the same pretty big size. I can't delete them from there tho because they're 'in use' idk but, i guess in use by Ccleaner while I'm looking at them via Disk Analyzer tool.
Ok, I'll use the file name to find them in windows explorer or whatever. They don't show up in a search of C:/. So i select one from the Ccleaner tool then right click and click 'Open containing folder. Can't find these files to manually delete them there. Or anywhere else.
Also, went to use windows disk analyzer(in disk defrag and optimize) and it says my hard disk needs analyzing, that it's 30% fragmented or whatever. If you or anyone that see's this could help out or point me in the correct direction it would be extremely appreciated. Thanks for taking the time.