Mac Secure Erase App Free Space
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Aug 27, 2018 Btw, as those applications are not really a security risk, there is no need to use ERASE FREE SPACE, as it puts unnecessary wear to the HDD. With the award-winning free space erase option in iShredder™ iOS®, you can wipe the unused disk space securely so that deleted data cannot be recovered. With an SSD drive, Secure Erase and Erasing Free Space are not available in Disk Utility. These options are not needed for an SSD drive because a standard erase makes it difficult to recover data.
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SECURE ERASE A SSD FROM COMMAND LINE
Securely erasing free space on your SSD
If you don’t want to take Apple’s word for it, if you’re not using FileVault, or if you just want to, there is a way to securely erase free space on your SSD. It’s a little more involved but it works.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, let me state for the record that this really isn’t necessary to do, which is why Apple’s made it so hard to do. But if you’re set on it, you’ll need to use Apple’s Terminal app. Terminal provides you with command line interface access to the OS X operating system. Terminal lives in the Utilities folder, but you can access Terminal from the Mac’s Recovery System, as well. Once your Mac has booted into the Recovery partition, click the Utilities menu and select Terminal to launch it.
From a Terminal command line, type:
diskutil secureErase freespace VALUE /Volumes/DRIVE
That tells your Mac to securely erase the free space on your SSD. You’ll need to change VALUE to a number between 0 and 4. 0 is a single-pass run of zeroes; 1 is a single-pass run of random numbers; 2 is a 7-pass erase; 3 is a 35-pass erase; and 4 is a 3-pass erase. DRIVE should be changed to the name of your hard drive. To run a 7-pass erase of your SSD drive in “Peters-Macbook”, you would enter the following:
diskutil secureErase freespace 2 /Volumes/Peters-Macbook
And remember, if you used a space in the name of your Mac’s hard drive, you need to insert a leading backslash before the space. For example, to run a 35-pass erase on a hard drive called “Macintosh HD” you enter the following:
diskutil secureErase freespace 3 /Volumes/Macintosh HD
Something to remember is that the more extensive the erase procedure, the longer it will take.
Your type of drive
One final thing, and maybe this should have been first, before you can securely erase your files on your Mac, you need to know if you have a standard hard drive or an SSD. To find out, or at least to make sure, you click on the Apple menu and select “About this Mac”. Once there select the “Storage” tab to see which drive is in your system.
After reading that title, you must be asking yourself: How will I delete hard drive space that is already ‘free’?
Well, you might not know this, but once you delete any file from your Mac the usual way, the file actually remains there, only that it is no longer usable by your Mac. Then, when you add more files to your Mac, they ‘overwrite’ the space taken by those unusable files that you deleted previously.
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What this means is that an advanced user who might come into possession of your Mac can actually recover files that you have deleted previously. Unless, of course, you delete them securely first.
For this, using the Terminal utility is perhaps the best way out, since it allows you much more control over what you are doing.
Important Note: Always remember to use Terminal ONLY when you are confident in what you are doing, since a simple mistake when using this utility can cause some serious damage to your Mac.So let’s learn how to securely erase all that free space on your Mac’s hard drive with Terminal.
First, here is the Terminal command we will be using. Just keep it there for now, since you will need to slightly change it before proceeding.
diskutil secureErase freespace 1 /dev/disk0s2
This is because this command uses slightly different values for each Mac, so before using it on Terminal, you will have to find the exact values for your Mac first.
– The first value to change is the number ‘1’. You can actually choose between ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ here. Using number ‘1’ erases your disk’s free space using a random single pass (one ‘pass’ means that the system overwrites the deleted files once). Number ‘2’ uses a 7-pass secure erase and number ‘3’ uses a special algorithm to perform a huge 35-pass secure erase.
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Obviously, the higher the number you choose, the longer the process will take. Usually, using numbers ‘1’ or ‘2’ should be more than enough to perform a safe erase.
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– Now, the second value you need to know is the Identifier number of the disk where you want to perform the process. For this, open Terminal and copy and paste this command:
diskutil list
This will display a list of all your Mac’s hard drives. What you need to copy is the Identifier number beside your selected disk. In my case, I want to securely erase the free space on the disk with 120.5 GB, so its Identifier number would be ‘disk0s2’.
With this information, you can now use the first command from above:
diskutil secureErase freespace 1 /dev/disk0s2
Just make sure to keep the number on ‘1’ or to change it to either ‘2’ or ‘3’ depending on how secure you want the erase process to be. Also, change ‘disk0s2’ to your hard drive’s own Identifier number. Once ready, press Enter/Return.
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After you do, just sit back and watch Terminal do its magic securely erasing all your hard drive’s free space.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#hard disk #terminal
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