Applies to: Pro, Enterprise and Audit
Purpose
This operation fills addressable free space with temporary random data, leaves a safety reserve, and removes the temporary data. Use it to reduce residual logical content from files deleted previously through ordinary deletion or other workflows.
Preparation
- Identify the exact volume.
- Confirm that free-space wiping is approved for that device and storage technology.
- Confirm that backups, snapshots, and provider-side copies are handled separately.
- Close applications that require substantial temporary disk space.
- Pause non-essential jobs that can expand during the wipe.
- Confirm a maintenance window and monitor low-space alerts.
- On laptops, connect reliable power.
Procedure
- Open CertErase.
- Open Tools > Wipe Free Space.
- Select the approved volume(s).
- Read the warning.
- Start the operation.
- Monitor progress and available space.
- Allow temporary-file cleanup to finish.
- Review the final output.
- Confirm that the temporary wipe directory is absent.
- Restart Windows if the system drive continues to report unexpectedly low free space.
- Export the required log.
Expected behavior
The drive can approach the configured reserve during the operation. CertErase aims to preserve approximately 4 GiB on the system drive and 1 GiB on other drives. These values are operational safeguards, not a guarantee against low-space effects in every environment.
Failure handling
If the operation fails:
- Preserve the output;
- Do not manually delete unknown temporary files until their origin is confirmed;
- Check permissions, quotas, locks, storage health, and endpoint-security events;
- Confirm that normal free space has recovered;
- Rerun only under an approved response plan.