CCleaner

Any CCleaner users here ?

My latest and several previous versions of CCleaner are trying to tell
me that my HDDs are SSDs. They are HDDs.

Any idea what is going on with this ?

Nat wrote:

Any CCleaner users here ?

My latest and several previous versions of CCleaner are trying to tell
me that my HDDs are SSDs. They are HDDs.

Any idea what is going on with this ?

I can see a few threads about that on the Piriform forums.

https://forum.piriform.com/topic/482...rives-as-ssds/

Windows 10 has that problem, in the Optimizer screen. And it
does matter, because the stupid thing wants to TRIM a
hard drive, rather than defragment it. Which is stupid
and doesn't do anything of course.

Now, how would a problem like that, have shown up in Windows 7 ?

Would some library that Microsoft is using (like a .NET
library), have made its way to Windows 7 and given your
symptoms ?

In my case, I tried the "winsat" recipe and that did nothing.
Winsat is the old performance analyzer that all the kids used
to compare benches on the computer with, but it's mostly
deprecated on Windows 10. In any case, re-running winsat
to evaluate disk speed, doesn't do anything.

I don't really know of any other tricks or points of leverage.
Maybe the identification was coming from the BIOS (like, an
ACPI table), but the thing is, there were several releases
of Win10 where this was all working. It broke in 16299,
and might be fixed in 17034. Do they even test this stuff ?
Even a little bit ?

Since the problem has been around for a while on CCleaner,
that makes it harder to point fingers. It could just as
easily be a Piriform problem in this case. But the interesting
part is, I've seen this mis-identification elsewhere, and
it makes you wonder. You should be able to tell an SSD
by the contents of its SMART table. Or even by some product
string in the metadata.

Paul

Nat wrote:

My latest and several previous versions of CCleaner are trying to tell
me that my HDDs are SSDs. They are HDDs.

Where is CCleaner declaring the type of your storage media?

In CCleaner, there are the following sections:
- Cleaner: That's an *app* cleaner regardless on what media they are
stored.
- Registry: Obviously a Windows thing, not a drive thing.
- Tools: Duplicates the Add/Remove Programs list, lists startup
programs, lists web browser plug-ins & add-ons, Disk Analyzer - shows
which type of files are consuming disk space, Duplicate Finder - tries
to find duplicate files, System Restore (another GUI to the Windows
function), Drive Wiper - erases the unallocated and optionally the
sectors on the drive (whatever physical type it may be). None of
those even hint at the type of storage media (the drive's physical
characteristics).
- Options: Those are for how the CCleaner application behaves.
- Upgrade: Shown if using the free version.

So where in CCleaner is it making a distinction of the physical type of
storage media? You never mention which edition of CCleaner you are
using: free or paid. There was never anything in the Pro or Pro+
editions that I needed or couldn't get free elsewhere. From the edition
comparison at https://www.ccleaner.com/ccleaner, I still see nothing
where CCleaner even cares what is the physical type of storage media,
EXCEPT in the Professional Plus edition that lists "Hardware Inventory".
Is that any different than their free Speccy tool? You paid for
CCleaner?

In their Speccy tool, yep, the SSDs are listed under the "Hard Drives"
section. Well, they are "hard" drives, not optical or removable drives.
HDD = Hard *Disk* drive. SSD = Solid-State Drive. A hard drive can be
other than an HDD. Once SSDs became more common was when "hard drive"
meaning "hard disk drive" had to be differentiated by using HDD to
identify a storage type with rotating magnetic platters and heads flying
over them. This is similar to how "applications" on desktop PC started
to get called "programs" to differentiate them from "apps" (kept as a
short form and not expanded to "applications") for the software on
smartphones.

As far as Speccy is concerned, the IDE/ATA/PATA/SATA interface to the
device is the same regardless of the physical type of storage media. If
you look in Speccy (or the Hardware Inventory feature of CCleaner Pro+),
the SSD even pretends it is an HDD. Notice it reports Heads, Cylinders,
Tracks, and sectors just as would an HDD despite that LBA mode has been
used with HDDs for a long time to access it only via sector count, not
by heads, cylinders, and tracks.

If a device reports itself as an HDD, how would the software know
otherwise? Not even Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) knows or cares if
the drive is physically an HDD or SDD.

You are using Windows 7. In Windows 8+, there is some distinction made
between different hard drive physical types: Hard Disk Drive and Solid
State Drive. In Disk Management, right-click on a partition, choose
Optimize, and a new window appear that lists all partitions and the type
of the corresponding data container. Not available under Windows 7.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...-identify-ssd/

See Pat's reply at the end where he notes the MediaType and SpindleSpeed
will indicate if a hard drive is an HDD or an SSD; however, those WMI
queries are available on on Windows 8, and later. Another example:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...a-hdd-or-a-ssd

That shows how to use a batch (.bat) file to issue the WMI calls to
determine if the hard drive is an HDD or SDD. Works on Windows 8, and
up, but on Windows 7 the output reports all HDDs and SSDs as HDD. The
WMI call is not supported on Windows 7. If the OS does not distinguish
then neither can the programs.

On 05/30/2018 9:01 AM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-05-30 01:55, Nat wrote:

Any CCleaner users here ?

My latest and several previous versions of CCleaner are trying to tell
me that my HDDs are SSDs.Â* They are HDDs.

Any idea what is going on with this ?

????

A quick trawl through the menus show his info. Where did you find it?
What version of CCleaner?


Under settingsWipe free space it shows my C: as an SSD and if you
choose to do this it expands and explains about SSDs.
my version is 5.41.6446 64 bit free.

Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 05/30/2018 9:01 AM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-05-30 01:55, Nat wrote:

Any CCleaner users here ?

My latest and several previous versions of CCleaner are trying to tell
me that my HDDs are SSDs.* They are HDDs.

Any idea what is going on with this ?

????

A quick trawl through the menus show his info. Where did you find it?
What version of CCleaner?

Under settingsWipe free space it shows my C: as an SSD and if you
choose to do this it expands and explains about SSDs.
my version is 5.41.6446 64 bit free.

Just FYI: No such problem with v5.35.6210 (64-bit) CCleaner Free on
my Windows *8.1*.

BTW, CCleaner just said that 5.43.6522 is available, so you might want
to try that newer version.

Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-05-30 12:51, FredW wrote:
On Wed, 30 May 2018 09:23:21 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:
On 05/30/2018 9:01 AM, Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-05-30 01:55, Nat wrote:

Any CCleaner users here ?

My latest and several previous versions of CCleaner are trying to tell
me that my HDDs are SSDs.* They are HDDs.

Any idea what is going on with this ?

????

A quick trawl through the menus show his info. Where did you find it?
What version of CCleaner?

Under settingsWipe free space it shows my C: as an SSD and if you
choose to do this it expands and explains about SSDs.
my version is 5.41.6446 64 bit free.

That is funny.

My CCleaner 5.40.6411 (64-bit) shows under Tools/Drive Wiper:

5.43.6522 64 bit Pro.

C:\ (SSD)
H:\ (SSD)
I:\ (SSD)
K:\ (SSD)
L:\ (SSD)
M:\ (SSD)

Shows all partitions, no (XXX) beside them.

My computer of 2012 (Win7HP64SP2) has no SSD at all.

HP Pavilion p7-1449, win 8.1 Home 64-bit.

So it must be either the better computer or Windows 8.1. Since we're
not in the habit of attributing positives to Microsoft products, it must
be the better computer! Excellent choice! Mine/SWMBO's is an HP Pavilion
as well!

Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Wolf K wrote:

Nat wrote:

My latest and several previous versions of CCleaner are trying to tell
me that my HDDs are SSDs.* They are HDDs.

A quick trawl through the menus show his info. Where did you find it?
What version of CCleaner?

Under settingsWipe free space it shows my C: as an SSD and if you
choose to do this it expands and explains about SSDs. my version is
5.41.6446 64 bit free.

See my first reply. WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation), an
extension to the Windows Driver Model, in Windows 7 isn't providing
differentiation between HDD and SSD, so how could CCleaner? The WMI
wasn't updated to provide that differentiation until Windows 8. If the
device doesn't report back any details from a WMI call on device type,
most apps won't know. The app could use its own detection code instead
of relying on WMI but the device must still report something different
to indicate HDD versus SSD.

In my Windows 7 Home x64, CCleaner (5.43.6522 x64) Drive Wiper has
"(SSD)" appended to my C: drive. Yep, it's an SSD: Samsung 850 EVO
250GB. Note that "(HDD)" is *not* appended to the drive letters for
partitions on my HDDs. The OP didn't mention the brand and model of his
SSD. Maybe it reports only the same info as would an HDD, so
differentiation isn't possible by the app's own code or via WMI.

There have been reports in Piriform's forums that CCleaner incorrectly
identifies the drive type. USB HDDs were getting flagged as SSDs which
prevented wiping them as HDDs. Laptop SSD drives were getting flagged
as HDDs. Many of those users don't report what OS they were using at
the time, so I don't know if there is a problem in CCleaner's own device
type detection code or in Windows 8+ WMI (since WMI in Windows 7 doesn't
support differentiation between HDD and SSD). Other programs getting
the device type, like HD Sentinal Pro, can get that info using WMI. If
the app is looking at the firmware signature string to find "SSD" in the
name of the device, that is unreliable.

Latest free version !

I see this in several places, for one, the drive wipe.
Wipe free space.
It says I have SSDs and it warns that a wipe is too much wear on the SSD
and wants me to confirm to proceed which I do since they are HDDs not SSDs.

On Wed, 30 May 2018 09:23:21 -0500, Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Under settingsWipe free space it shows my C: as an SSD and if you
choose to do this it expands and explains about SSDs.
my version is 5.41.6446 64 bit free.

W7 HP SP1 x64
CCleaner 5.43.6522 (portable)

It shows:

Windows (C (SSD)
Data (D

Which is correct.

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