Deleting does not recover space hd

Hi,
I have a 360 gb external drive connected to my imac. I just deleted a lot of files but it still appears to show the same amount of free space as before the deletion. I've restarted everything but still the same. Hoping someone knows what this might be.
Many thanks,
Jack

Did you empty the trash?

Regards

Yeah, deleted files still take up space until you empty the Trash. It's kind of like your trash cart in your alley or garage, or wherever. You get the trash out of the house or apartment, but it doesn't go away until the garbage truck visits.

And empty the trash before disconnecting the external, otherwise like USB sticks etc the files just stay right where they are.

Thanks Guys, but what do you take me for, of course I emptied the trash.

By all means, emptying the trash does free said used space, however.... here's how trash works, in a nutshell:

The data on your HD is comprised of 0's and 1's. Nothing more. When a sector of a HD is filled with these digits, other data may be moved in order that the newer data is seen first and gotten to more quickly.

When any data is "deleted" from said HD, in a normal fashion, such as emptying the trash, this data actually still exists but the HD will read it as though it's free space. Reason being, is that until that "deleted" data is written over by newer data, it actually hasn't been broken down. It doesn't just magically vaporize from the disk.

However again, there is a method which you can use within OS X which will actually break those 0's and 1's down so that they're not legible to the OS anymore. This method of deleting is called "secure deleting". You can turn this option on from within Finder preferences. Be warned however, that this method will at times slow your system down to a stand still.

It is not only writing over the data with 0's, but it is scrutinizing everything about that data. So while you might only see one single file that you're deleting, this method will now tell you that the single file is comprised of a thousand other tiny bits of data (which it will show you as files) that it is now writing over.

I personally don't recommend this method unless you're very anal or paranoid about what needs to be deleted and gone for good. You can even go to further extremes and download a dashboard widget which will go over your data 30 times, which is like... ridiculous, but it's also going to make sure that even the government can't recover anything from your HD.

Doug

iMacjack said:

Thanks Guys, but what do you take me for, ...

Click to expand...

That would be a complete newbie. You didn't provide any indication of your experience level. This is frequently the appropriate answer to new users, who cannot be counted upon to post in the Switcher Forum.

I don't know if Trash is part of the "domain" of the UI, but you could try this:

Find HD/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist
Move that to your Desktop.
Restart. This makes a new default plist in Preferences.
Check the free space.
If that seems to fix it, you can Trash the plist on the Desktop.
If you're not sure, keep that file around awhile. You can always move it back and overwrite the new default. That will reset anything you had changed.

From experience we've found that starting with the basic things is what a lot of people overlook and it fixes most issues..but otherwise..we can get deeper..as the others have..

Regards