System Won't Reboot Proper After Running "Erase Free Space" in Disk Utility

Thought I'd run it to see what happened.
On an 80gb HD with 35gb free, I was told I was running out of free space partway through the erase, program then quit. Kept system going for about two days without problems, then shut it down for a day. When I rebooted a few hours ago, it seemed to take forever to do so, followed by a dim perpetual blue screen which I couldn't brighten via the keyboard. Waited 20 minutes for screen to resolve into my desktop; alas, no such luck. Rebooted a few times, no change.
17 pB @ 1.33ghz & 1.5gb RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7)

One of the first things I tried: no effect.
Booted on the MacOS X CD and ran disk utility and it found errors, fixed them, rebooted from the hard drive and now I get a perpetual grey screen with the li'l rotater. Zapping doesn't do anything this time either.

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Time Capsule full after a "Erase Free Space" using Disk Utility

Hello,
I am facing some issues related to my Time Capsule.
Reviewing my past, I had a lot of backups on this, using Time Machine and it always worked pretty well. But after deleting some backups manually to reclaim disk space, this was not exactly freeing it.
Searching in the forum here, I saw that I could mount the backup sparsebundle image and map it into the Disk Utility. This always worked greatly too both for disk checking and reclaiming the space back.
The problem starts on the last Friday when I performed the operation again, but it started using the whole free space that I had and did not give it back.
Studying the case I found that it creates a temporary folder to store the file it creates to write the byte 0 on the disk. This file actually resides in the sparsebundle image and therefore I can see the file with 200GB, for example, in the Finder, this is a split in bands (8MB) just like the backup is. After the disk gets full, the Disk Utility should delete the file properly and give me back the space safely.
Right now my Time Capsule has 0 byte free and I can't do anything on it beyond redo the the Erase Free Space operation. When I do it, it starts writing the temporary file again and the problem repeats itself.
I know that if I backup the data and really erase the disk, I'll get it back, but this is not an option for me because I want a smart solution for this.
The only thing that changed between when it worked and now is the 10.5.6 update that I made and I'd like that it's not the root of the issue.
Is there any suggestion or general stuff I could do to fix it?
Did anybody already face the same issue?
If anyone needs more details to help me out of this, just let me know.
Thanks and regards,
Eduardo

Just another thing to add, I'd like a good solution for this as the redo operation from Disk Utility takes around 2 days and then it just "dies".

Erased free space in Disk Utility, and after it finished it kept a DMG there.

I erased free space in Disk Utility, and after it finished it kept a DMG there called "DeveloperDiskImage.dmg", why is it left behind? can it be deleted? how? if erasing free space is supposed to help get memory and remove all the files truly, it shouldnt be creating anything, it created a DMG at the start, but it went away, after a hour and a half it made the DeveloperDiskImage, i went to eat dinner and when i came back it was done but that was left.

Delete it. Erasing the free space isn't supposed to free up any space; it's there in case someone deleted a file insecurely when they meant to securely delete it.
(65417)

Clicked erase free space in disk utility, now I have no SPACE!

I ran erase free space in disk utility in hopes of freeing up more room on my hard drive, and had 34 GB free, but now it says zero kb available. I have never done this before. It still has twelve hours to go, and I was wondering if this was normal.
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.7) White 2 Ghz.
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.7) White 2 Ghz.

Doing so does not free up any hard drive space.
Copied from this link.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh1010.html
You might see a message saying that you are running out of disk space, but you can ignore that warning. When this operation is complete, you will have the same amount of free space as you did when it started.
For suggestions to free up hard drive space, check this link.
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html

Start up and shut down is slow after erasing free space using disk utility?

I went to Disk Utility, clicked Erase, and then "Erase Free Space." When I saw that it was going to take 1 hour and 30 minutes, I tried closing disk utility. It wouldn't let me exit, so instead I pressed "Skip." But when you hover over the "Skip" button it says, "Erase all data and reformat the disk."
I'm wondering if the fact that I pressed the skip button has anything to do with my computer shutting down/starting up A LOT slower now. If so, what can I do to fix it?
Thanks!

Just wanted to give an update. I called Apple and apparently, you shouldn't empty the free space using disk utility while you're logged in. I had to insert the Installations CD and press the "C" button while my computer restarted, and used Disk Utility from there. My start up and shut down speed still isn't exactly the way it was before, but this definitely made a difference.
Thank you to those who replied to my question!

"Erase Free Space" in disk utility, writes a large file?

While poking around in disk utility I came upon the 'Erase Free Space" function so I decided to try it out and see how it worked. I chose the medium security setting and let it run. After a while I stopped it because it was going quite slowly. Afterwards I noticed that about 25gb of previously free space was gone from my HD. Did it write a backup file?
I tried looking for a file but "find" in finder coldn't seem to locate any files written during that time period.
any direction to recoup the space is greatly appreciated.

OK, thanks guys.
Sometimes the simplest things...
Now if I were at the office working on something on a windoze machine a restart would be the first thing I would try, you have to restart twice a day even if the machine is working properly!
I however, rarely shut down my Mac. Unless there is a thunderstorm or I am going away, or I've performed an update, the machine stays on/sleeps.
Apparently as an "erase free space " is being performed the space is being used as zeroes are written. When I allowed it to complete the space returned. However; the space that was consumed during the aborted try was still not availible.
Only after a restart did the space become shown as being free.
This has been great since I now know of 2 more helper apps. Tinker Tool allows me to see hidden files and change other prefs not availible natively. OmniDiskSweep quickly check file on the HD.
Thanks for your help, and if there were votes still, I'd use them all!
-T

Erasing free space using disk utility

Disk utility does not always work when trying to erase free space... I have 50 gigs of free space that I can not retrieve... I do not want to have erase my entire SSD like I did a month ago to clean up deleted files...

In Dec I did a complete re-install of Lion, because I was running out of SSD storage...
The other day, the Mac Air was acting strange, so I checked the SSD drive and found there was only 25 free gigs left... 60 gigs had disappeared in 5 weeks...
Here is where the 60 gigs went...
1. Added 9 gigs for new pictures
2. IPOD/iPhone Photo Cache added 13 gigs (It was emptied during the Lion re-install)
3. Time Machine, kept making hourly back-ups on the SSD, added 38 gigs (Turn off Time Machine & 38 gigs returned as free space)
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External Hard drive shows no space after failed "Delete Free Space" from Disk Utility

2009 13" MBP running 10.6.8
I was clearing out a section of my external to clean it of a former client's information. The operation worked fine until it got to the "create temporary files" where it got hung for several hours. Forced quit D.U. and rebooted my machine. Now the external only shows 5MB when it should be closer to 150MB.
I have run the the following script in Terminal to show hidden files:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
Not sure what files to delete.
Should I run:
sudo rm -f /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems/*
Will this delete the temporary items in my external or only my HD?
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Fixed it! I downloaded WhatSize and found the temporary files. Deleted and retrieved all my space!

I thought I was creating free space by erasing free space using disk utility but what I really did was literally ERASE MY FREE SPACE on my Macbook Pro 10.8.4 and all I want to know is what to do to recover my free space?

When I click on ABOUT THIS MAC and then on STORAGE it shows that I have like 700 gb of "OTHER" in yellow and all I want is for the yellow to disappear and have all my free space again! please someone help me
<Edited by Host>

Your free space hasn't gone anywhere. This is simply the initial result of the process. However, your free space should be there once you need to use it.
What is "Other" and What Can I Do About It?- Apple Support Communities

Lost free space after an "Erase Free Space" procedure

I just ran the "Erase Free Space" application from the Dick Utility. The erase failed and now I have ZERO free space available. I am now showing that all 111g or used oposed to roughly 50% prior to the Erase Free Space. I have found a few articles trying to explain what to do but, I have been unable to locate the empty temp files that we created during the Erase Free Space, so I have been told. Can anyone help me resolve this solution and restore my free space?
Thank you,
Shannon

WhatSize should be able to find the temporary files
<http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/>
You could try the Erase Free Space from Disk Utility on the install DVD. It might delete the files when it finishes.

After using "erase free space," hard drive has almost no available capacity

I decided to clean all the files off my iMac as I wasn't using it as my primary computer anymore. After deleting the files, I used Disk Utility and used "erase free space" with the 7x option. I also emptied the Trash folder.
When I checked the HD, I found:
Capacity: 297.77 GB
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I'd appreciate some advice on how to "free up" the available space that I know must be there.
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Hi, sounds like the secure erase didn't finish maybe & left a big invisible file on there.
How much free space is on the HD, where has all the space gone?
OmniDiskSweeper is likely the easiest/best, and is now free...
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/

Erase Free Space then Disk Full

help. I ran erase free space in DU, worked fine but then created some temp file/s which then filled my HD up. Where are these file/s so I can delete it. Before I had over 400G free, now nothing.
Is this normal when you run secure delete..?
Slee

Hi Glynn... So I gather. However, I didn't know at the time and may have screwed up. It ran fine for an hour, then said writing temporary files. After a few min's I got the error message start-up disk full, which it was. Not knowing what was happening, I hit skip. It them seem to hang, so I forced a quit.
Before I has 450G+ free on my disk, now less than a 100 meg. Oh dear. It seems by forcing a quit of DU these temp files have still to be deleted. Where are they..?
Help
Steve

Erase free space in Disk Utilities grayed out for SSD

Is it normal that this function (erase free space) does not work for a SSD? It is grayed out on my iMac for SSD not for the 1 TB HDD.
Now that I installed Lion and Trim is working (on original Apple SSD) in my iMac I would like to erase free space. I read somewhere that you should do this if you did not have the Trim option before and you do have it now. Or is this BS?
peterwillem

Take a look at this link, https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3210131?start=0&tstart=0

"Erase Free Space"- DU Not Responding?!

     Started "Erase Free Space" in disk utility about 36 hours ago. I had nearly 1TB of free space which I knew was more than the usual amount someone has when they perform this task but I was attempting to speed up game playing as after a year or so, excess of deleted saved games and game data has gradually slowed game performance down some. I read that this might help so I ran it...
     It took 24 hours to do the initial run through up until the "creating temporary secondary file" notification. It looked as though it was about to complete and I received the usual error message that apple says to ignore about no remaining free space or something to that effect. However, out of nowhere the spin wheel started, the Disk Utility window went grey and everything seemed to have frozen.
     After reading several peoples experiences with things like this I was confident that it would resolve in a few minutes, maybe half an hour even and then most likely resolve itself. It was late so I went to bed and when I got up it was still in the same place as I left it...greyed out and spin wheeled.
     So then I went to the Activity Monitor to check the Disk Usage as I knew that I could view the progress through that. As far as I'm aware, after creating the temporary file, as it already did, it is supposed to start looking like free space is "disappearing" as it puts the recently overwritten free space into its newly created temp file and then eventually deletes the file.
     Problem is, the Activity Monitor shows the Disk Utility as "Not Responding" along with Safari and Mail having the same message, yet at the same time I see the free space on my HD SLOWLY (20-100kb/s) doing that "dissapearing" act. So is the Disk Utility doing its job? Is it hung up some how? If it is working then why is it moving at such an incredibly slow rate? Should I be concerned or take some sort of action or just wait while this resolves itself in who knows how long from now?
Advice on this would be very much appreciated as I am not a very experienced Mac user.

apple customer 1 billion wrote:
There aren't that many files to lose in the long run. It's more a matter of avoiding the risk out of convinience for not losing the few that I have. So correct, I have no back up since there isn't much to back up, hence the nearly 1TB of overwritting free space in the first place. Unfortunately, I realized just how long this process takes after I began it, and now it seems to late...
If I did restart, what would likely happen?
Possibilities I've come across:
1.won't be able to log in because theres no more free space
2.I'd have to search for the temp file and manually delete it (provided I had some extra space to do it)
3.might lose all data and have to reinstall everything
Could be any or all 3
Is there a safe way to either:
1.Restart with little to no complications listed above
2.Safely end this task without some sort of unfixable complication occuring
3.Boost its processing so that I can resonably wait it out
There may not be, but I might as well check around before I go straight to Restart is what I was thinking.
No, no and no unfortunately, patience or a leap of faith are the choices

Disk Utility - Erase Free Space - Creating Temporary File Freezes

BDAqua: I tried responding to your reply to my original posting but I get an error message that I was not authorized to reply. I logged out. I can't find the original posting in my Activity so I approached from the link in my e-mail saying you had replied. Now it says the area is restricted. What's up with that?
Rod
Here's the original post:
I used "Erase Free Space" with Disk Utility after trashing several files I no longer wanted on the hard drive or recovered. I used "Zero Out Deleted Files" option. It took over 12 hours before an error message appeared "Your start up disk is almost full. You need to make more space available on your start up disk by deleting files." I thought that was what I was doing. Disk Utility continued but got stuck on "Creating Temporary File." I force quit Disk Utility after several more hours. I had to manually shut down the computer because the restart command wouldn't work. It rebooted and appears to be OK. Evidently, this temporary file consumes significant amounts of disk space. This is an older iMac with 10.4.11 (18 GHz PowerPC G5) - I know, pretty old but I still have OS 9 on it and several files I need to extract before I trash it.
1. Should I do nothing? The iMac seems to be working fine.
2. How do I know if this Temporary File exists and consuming space? Spotlight doesn't find it. Where is it?
3. Is my start up disk in fact almost full? How would I know that?

Here's what I tried to say in my response that I wasn't authorize to make:
I can't seem to reply to your response BD . . . says I'm not authorize . . . so I'll try to reply to my original post.
Thanks BD for your reply. Here's the info on the drive: 1.3 TB capacity with 1,017 GB available. Eventually I will recycle the computer at Best Buy who guarantees the hard drive will be erased. I just want to get all my files off first. I'll just do another Erase Free Space and see, as you suggest, if there are any files to be zeroed out. Maybe there aren't any. I've extracted most of what I want but am debating how to move the entire iPhoto library to an external drive so I can access it from my Mavericks machine. Can I just drag and drop the iPhoto Library, or do I need to export it somehow?

System Won't Reboot Proper After Running "Erase Free Space" in Disk Utility

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