Erasing Free Space

now im wondering if erasing my free space is good. i think on the apple site it said it was good if you didnt want recovered items back so i started erasing my free space.. is it good? is it also okay to stop the erase during the middle of it? just curious

- iWonder (alot)

What is erasing free space, please elaborate a bit more...

in disk utility you have the option to erase your free space on the macintosh harddrive. it makes sure that your trash wont have recovered files.. you know the ones that sometimes usually always get there (did that make sense!?)

it probuably made sense to people who have heard of it before, but I was jut confused I really did not know waht you were talking about I am sorry for not knowing if it is good or bad for your computer or not but if apple says it is, I am going to have to say that it is.

Basically, when you delete a file, it doesn't actually get erased from the hard drive, it is still written there. When you delete it is just allows the space to be written over if needed, so files can be recovered after deleted unless that spot is written over, which is what erasing free space does.

mynameis said:

Basically, when you delete a file, it doesn't actually get erased from the hard drive, it is still written there. When you delete it is just allows the space to be written over if needed, so files can be recovered after deleted unless that spot is written over, which is what erasing free space does.

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You can also use the "Secure Empty Trash" command to write over anything you delete. Unless your regularly deal with incriminating files, I think this is much more useful.

When you erase a file the system removes the pointer to the file. The file remains on the system. That is just like removing the table of contents of a book, the chapters are still there, just not the location of the chapters. When using secure erase or the disk utility application to erase the free space, you are writing zero of the files being erased. That was the data that is erased can not be recovered easily.

in disk utility you have the option to erase your free space on the macintosh harddrive

Click to expand...

I use Panther, in disk utility, erase will erase the whole HD, I believe in pc talk that would be format.. I could be wrong.

I think you are looking for this:

Click Here [Apple Support Page]

From reading that it appears you won't do any harm (there is no reason you should), just so long as you don't want any of the deleted files back.

It also states that stopping it will not cause damage.

jram said:

I use Panther, in disk utility, erase will erase the whole HD, I believe in pc talk that would be format.. I could be wrong.

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I am pretty sure the erase free space option came with Tiger...