Inability to Secure Empty Trash with 10.8.5

[theALmighty66]

Hi!

I really want to open up a lot of unused local hard drive storage that I know I have, and I realize that Secure Empty Trash will help achieve that, but when I Erase Free Space I get the following annoying error message.

How can I get around this & zero out the free space I know I have…so that I can finally upgrade to a newer form of OS X?

Thanks!

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

Secure Erase and erasing fee space don't free up any space...they are used to prevent data recovery. The only way to free up space is to actually delete files.

Video and audio files take up the most space. If you have a lot of iTunes Movie purchases, you could delete them from iTunes to reclaim the space they take up. They can always be re-downloaded at a later date. Also, backing up videos from iPhoto/Photos to an external drive and deleting them from you internal drive will regain space.

Other files that take up a lot of space are iOS device backups, applications, email attachments, etc.

Secure Erase may be failing because you only have 8.91 GB of free space currently, especially if you are attempting to delete a large amount of files.

Do you have a current Time Machine or other backup of your data?

C

 

[theALmighty66]

Thank you!

You said, "Secure Erase may be failing because you only have 8.91 GB of free space currently, especially if you are attempting to delete a large amount of files."

How big is the temporary file likely to be? … Why must there be a temporary file anyhow? It's messing everything uuuuuup.

 

[theALmighty66]

Oh man, I just don't know why I have so little free space despite the two user accounts on my laptop taking up far less than what is reported to be in use.

 

[theALmighty66]

All right, my local hard drive has 160GB to work with. One user account takes up 59GB, the other 42.42GB. By my math, that's 101.42GB taken … but I only have 9.68 to use.

What the heeeeLLLLLLLLL do I have to do to clear up more space? I want to finally update my old-ass OS, but I can't b/c THE SYSTEM IS BEATING ME.

Thank you. -ha-

 

[Cory Cooper]

We should continue this in your other post: Why do I have such little free space in proportion to used hard drive space?

C

 

[Cory Cooper]

How big is the temporary file likely to be? … Why must there be a temporary file anyhow?

The size of the temporary file is dependent on the amount/size of the files you are deleting. It is my understanding that it moves the files around as it deletes/writes over the space they took on the drive, to prevent recovery...thus securely erasing the files. So, it could use at least twice the space of the files it is deleting.

C

 

[theALmighty66]

You're the best!