What's the difference...

Joined
Feb 15, 2008
Messages
457
Reaction score
1
Points
18
Location
Winston-Salem, NC
Your Mac's Specs
10 GB 13" MacBook Pro, 64GB WiFi, 128GB iPhone 7
... between "Empty Trash" and "Secure Empty Trash?" TIA.
 
Joined
Jul 2, 2006
Messages
4,554
Reaction score
146
Points
63
Location
Crawley, England
Your Mac's Specs
20" Intel iMac 2.4 Ghz/3G Ram/320HD, Snow Leopard. PBook G4, 1.5Ghz/1.5 Ram/250 HD, Leopard 10.5.6.
Empty trash basically just earmarks the space on the HD so that it can be overwritten, but in theory you could recover that data.
Secure empty overwrites the space with 0's and 1's, basically overwrites the data completely. This is why it takes so much longer, but it also free's up more space than empty trash.
 
OP
billwill
Joined
Feb 15, 2008
Messages
457
Reaction score
1
Points
18
Location
Winston-Salem, NC
Your Mac's Specs
10 GB 13" MacBook Pro, 64GB WiFi, 128GB iPhone 7
Empty trash

Thank you!
 
Joined
Jul 30, 2009
Messages
7,295
Reaction score
301
Points
83
Location
Wisconsin
Your Mac's Specs
Mac Mini (Late 2014) 2.6GHz Intel Core i5 Memory: 8GB 1600MHz DDR3
... it also free's up more space than empty trash.

Really? Isn't the space still available, whether it's been "wiped" or not? I don't know. I'll have to look the next time I wipe free space to see if the Finder reports more space.
 
Joined
Jul 2, 2006
Messages
4,554
Reaction score
146
Points
63
Location
Crawley, England
Your Mac's Specs
20" Intel iMac 2.4 Ghz/3G Ram/320HD, Snow Leopard. PBook G4, 1.5Ghz/1.5 Ram/250 HD, Leopard 10.5.6.
Well I have noticed it's quite a bit different for some reason. Maybe it's because I only do secure empty once a month or so, but as an example.
I trashed and emptied a small amount of stuff last time, maybe 100MB or so, dragged one file in and decided to secure empty, and after it had finished I had about 400 mb extra space.
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top