2 Months to erase free space?!?

[randosity42]

So yesterday i wanted to wipe the free space in my hard drive to make sure any deleted files couldnt be recovered. I was leaving to go to a family function for easter and figured I would just set my computer to auto shutoff when the operation was finished ad leave it run. I got back today and found that not only was it not done, but the total progress for the operation was only 2% after 26 hours. I did the math and figured that at this the program will take over 8 weeks to erase 197GB of unused disk space. Clearly something is wrong...

I am using 5.8.8 and a 64 bit version of windows 7...anyone know what i'm doing wrong?

 

[garrett01]

Did you choose 1 pass or 35? Either way it needs to fill all free space and this will take time on a 197GB drive.