Erase/wipe free space using Mac OS X When deleting a file, most operating systems just delete the reference to this file, not its actual content. For illustration, that’s like removing a chapter from a book’s table of contents without actually removing (and shredding) the according pages in the book. Encrypt your storage. Download an android emulator for pc and mac. Storage encryption combined with a secure password protects all of your data, including against any data that might remain on a failing or failed or replaced storage device; including any remaining data in a hard disk free space. The Secure Erase operation is the analog to a pattern overwrite in a hard disk. If you’re selling an old Mac with a hard drive, a spare hard drive, or you’re just quite paranoid about your deleted data, you’re either familiar with—or should be familiar with—the Erase Free Space button on the Erase tab in Disk Utility (found in your Applications - Utilities folder).

1. How To Free Up Space On Mac
2. Secure Wipe Free Space Mac
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4. Wipe Free Space Mac Catalina
5. Mac Wipe Free Disk Space

The well known Piriform’s PC Optimization software CCleaner it is now available on Mac for Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion. It this post I will show You how to use “Wipe Free Space” feature of CCleaner.

How To Free Up Space On Mac

But why should I wipe the free space on a hard disk?

When you create any sort of file in your system, what happens here is that there is actually a certain hard drive space that is assigned to that file. That memory space is unique to that particular file. Now, when you delete that file, it would then be transferred to the Trash. When you empty your Trash, you then get rid of the file effectively, right? Wrong.

The hard drive space that was once assigned to the deleted file remains in existence. As long as this still exists, can be virtually recovered by skilled technicians or hackers. This is one of the principles of data recovery software. So if You want that an information sent to Trash to be effectively removed forever, you need to use a wipe free space software.

Secure Wipe Free Space Mac

CCleaner it is able currently to do 3 types of wiping: Zero Out, 7-pass erase and 35-pass erase. Any of those methods will generally make impossible recovery using commercial grade software recovery. The number of erasing passes it is relevant just for very sensitive data that could be hardware recovered by specialized laboratories in an controlled environment using direct plate reading even from defective hard drivers. But in this case it is better to use dedicated erasing software that include DoD and other sophisticated algorithms.

From http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner you can download CCleaner for Mac.

You can install like any usual application, with a simple drag to application folder.

In the tools tab You will find the Erase Free Space button as you can see in this screenshot.

You can choose the hard drive volume of which you want to wipe the free space. After that you simply press the Erase Free Space button. Depends on the size of the disk, could run for few minutes or for hours.

When deleting a file, most operating systems just delete the reference to this file, not its actual content. For illustration, that’s like removing a chapter from a book’s table of contents without actually removing (and shredding) the according pages in the book.

Erase Free Space Mac High Sierra

So, in order to really (securely) delete a file on a hard disk, there are basically two methods (simplified; from a technical point of view it’s both the same):

Wipe Free Space Mac Catalina

• Overwrite the file content (i.e. its clusters) with random data
• Delete the file as usual, empty the trash and overwrite the whole free space on the according hard disk with random data

For the second method, here’s how to do it using Mac OS X:

Mac Wipe Free Disk Space

1. Delete the file(s) and empty the trash
2. Find out the device name of the according hard disk by opening a new ‘Terminal’ window and executing the “df” command. For example, for a RAID 1 disk, the path of the disk might be something like “/dev/disk2”
3. In the opened ‘Terminal’ window, execute:
   diskutil secureErase freespace 1 /dev/disk2
   where “1” stands for “single-pass random-fill erase” and “/dev/disk2” is the disk device (adjust this to match your disk). When prompted, enter the admin’s credentials.

Note that overwriting free space like this takes quite some time depending on the amount of free space there is and how many passes you need (e.g. use “2” for a US DoD 7-pass secure erase or “3” for a Gutmann 35-pass secure erase). For more information about diskutil and its options, see “man diskutils”.