You cannot use 'diskutil' to erase the free space anymore because Apple has disabled this feature because:
If you’re selling an old Mac, 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). Download and install the 30-day free BitRaser File Eraser tool on your Mac. Launch the tool and from the ' Select What To Erase ' screen, toggle on Unused Space, then click Next. Select the volume to erase unused space, then click Erase. On the Confirm Erasure dialog box appears, click Confirm Erase. MacKeeper is the ultimate software for your Mac to keep it slick and secure 24/7. Try every cleaning, security, privacy and performance tool we offer for free.
- It is harmful to an SSD
- It is not needed when an SSD is using TRIM (since the blocks are erased fairly quickly after data has been deleted).
- Due to how SSDs work internally erasing the 'free' space may not overwrite the data you are looking to shred because once a NAND block is recycled the OS doesn't have access to that particular block.
What you want to do is not possible. TRIM happens to do exactly what you intend which is 'shredding' the data once it has been deleted. The SSD's internal garbage collection routines will do the same thing eventually if TRIM is not enabled. If you don't have TRIM enabled, then make sure to uncheck 'Put hard disk to sleep when possible' in the Energy Saver System Preferences so that the SSD will remain powered on when the computer is not in use so that the SSD's garbage collection routines will have time to run to perform maintenance on the SSD which includes zeroing out the recycled NAND blocks.
Mac Secure Erase Free Space
Sep 7, 2020 10:23 AM
Mac Secure Erase Free Space Mac
I'm having a pretty serious problem. I attempted to erase the free space on my HD, as I do from time to time, except this time it appeared to hang/freeze at the end, when it gets to the part where it creates a temporary file. I waited for several minutes and it didn't move. I tried clicking the skip button, but that did nothing either, so I force quit Disk Utility.
The problem is, it left the disk at 'Zero KB' of free space, effectively making my computer inoperable. I was in the process of studying for a huge exam tomorrow, and am currently flipping out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
If it matters, I'm on a Macbook Pro 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo, running 10.4.
I really don't want to have to reinstall the OS and import the old files, but my real fear is that I will have to do a fresh install of the OS.
Thanks in advance,
steiney