Disk Utility Error - Secure Erase Free Space failure
I have encountered a problem which I can't solve: I've used the secure erase feature to wipe unused parts of the disk before without problem. Now I get the following error message each time I try to use Disk Utility to do so:
"Secure Erase Free Space failed
Secure Erase Free Space failed with the error:
Could not create temporary file"
I tried it with the hard disk on the computer, my external backup disk, and a USB thumb drive. Same error message in each case.
If anyone knows the solution I would appreciate the help. I've scoured these fora and the internet to no avail.
Thanks.
Tried booting from another hard drive and running Disk Utility Repair Disk? follow up with Disk Warrior after that.
I would just do a full volume clone, reinitialize, and restore.
Similar Messages
-
Secure Erase Free Space Failed
Secure Erase Free Space failed with the error:
Couldn't create temporary file.
Hello, I own a 15" Macbook Pro 2011 Late model but I recently replaced the hard drive with SSD and upgraded the memory to 16gb. It was working fine for about 4 months and now sometime it freezes while browsing or even opening an application. I had to restart the macbook and sometime I would get a white screen. I was able to get by the white screen by restarting constantly. I am afraid to shut this macbook down and end up with a white screen. While I got through the white screen, I was able to use the disk utility and got this message when I was cleaning up free space. My SSD has 431.82 GB free of 478.89 GB. Can anyone tell me where do I locate the temporary file or is there something else I need to fix? Please let me know. Thank you.
VincentI understands that.
But heres what Im talking about -
Disk Utility Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit 1
#!/bin/bash
# Author : Bill Hernandez
# Location : Plano, Texas
# Updated : Saturday, June 6, 2009 (1:48 PM)
# script name : setdisk_ownerenabled
# make sure to set permissions to execute
<hr>
# Description :
<hr>
# I've noticed that sometimes when using disk utility I cannot repair permissions, or I might get :
# ERROR: The underlying task reported failure on exit 1
# This shell script seems to have solved the problem.
# It worked very well for me,
# IF YOU USE THIS SCRIPT, IT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK...
# DO NOT USE IT UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IT DOES
# After running it, it is best to restart before using Disk Utility again
<hr>
# Details :
<hr>
# After partitioning a disk using "Disk Utility", and then begin using it, at some point I would get
# an arror message when trying to save to one of the partitions, yet when I looked at the permissions
# everything looked fine. I would then try to use Disk Utility to repair permissions and end up with a
# cryptic error that pretty much told me nothing.
# I noticed that while in Disk Utility, if I selected a partition the lower LH corner of the dialog
# showed : Owners Enabled : No
# I tried selecting the partitions at the Desktop and doing a (CMD-I) and at the very bottom of each
# info dialog there was a checkbox :
# [ ] ignore ownership of this volume
# which I would check, even after logging in as root, and I couldn't seem to get a consistent way
# to get rid of the permissions dialog failure, so I found the vsdbutil command which can be used
# as follows to get partition, or disk info :
# $ vsdbutil -c /Volumes/driveor_partitionname
# ----> Permissions on '/Volumes/driveor_partitionname' are enabled.
# if it is not enabled you can enable the disk or partition using :
# $ vsdbutil -a /Volumes/driveor_partitionname
# It will set "Owners Enabled : Yes"
# This below script loops through the mounted disks, partitions, etc. and gives you information.
# You can leave the three flags below all set to TRUE, or selectively use what you want and change
# the rest to false...
<hr>
# CHOOSE {"TRUE", "FALSE"}
<hr>
getvolumestatus="TRUE" # get "Owners Enabled : (Yes|No)" status
setvolumestatus="TRUE" # set "Owners Enabled : Yes"
list_volumes="TRUE" # show volume names
<hr>
# DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING BELOW HERE
<hr>
if [ $getvolumestatus == "TRUE" ]; then
echo '============================='
echo '$getvolumestatus'
echo '============================='
# get "Owners Enabled : (Yes|No)" status
for i in $( df -l | sort -u | awk '{print $6}' | grep '/' ); do
vsdbutil -c $i
done
fi
<hr>
if [ $setvolumestatus == "TRUE" ]; then
echo '============================='
echo '$setvolumestatus'
echo '============================='
sudo echo -n
# set "Owners Enabled : Yes"
for i in $( df -l | sort -u | awk '{print $6}' | grep '/' ); do
sudo vsdbutil -a "$i"
echo "setting Owners Enabled : Yes for ---> $i"
done
fi
<hr>
if [ $list_volumes == "TRUE" ]; then
echo '============================='
echo '$list_volumes'
echo '============================='
for i in $( df -l | sort -u | awk '{print $6}' | grep '/' ); do
echo $i
done
fi
<hr>
As it turns out, this didn't completely solve the problem, it solved part of the problem.
Here is a summary to the root cause of the problem.
SUCCESS...
Problem Summary : The system crashed and would hangup during boot, tried many things, until I eventually erased the disk and started over again.
iMacG5 24 GHZ Intel with One internal disk partitioned into 3 logical drives
Cub_1 OS X 10.5.7
Cub_2 OS X 10.5.7 (Carbon Copy Cloner backup of Cub_1)
Cub_3 OS X Server 10.5.7 (standard os x server setup)
At some point after setting up standard preferences, OS X Server crashed.
When I tried to restart, the machine would hang up during boot.
Finally after several attempts, ran Disk Utility from install dvd and repaired Cub_3
When I tried to run "Repair Permissions" on Cub_3 from install dvd, I got an error
Disk Utility Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit 1.
Rebooted, and started in single user mode (CMD-S) during boot until I saw the unix commands on the screen
RAN : root # fsck -fy
Then I began seeing the same command filling the screen :
posix_spawnp("/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder") could not find file or directory
Called Enterprise Support and spoke to Frank Alcorn, he said this was most likely a permissions problem and asked me to try repairing permissions from the install dvd. I told him about the error, but nevertheless I tried it again and got the same Disk Utility Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit 1..
He asked me to try booting into single user mode again, and to try
root # chmod 775 /
root # reboot
During the reboot process the machine got hung up again, and could not get the single user mode to work at all.
Frank said the command needed to be :
root # chmod 1775 /
Frank asked me if I had changed anything in file sharing, and I told him I had. He asked me what I had shared, and I said the entire drive Cub_3. He asked me what I had done for permissions, if I had denied permissions to anyone. I told him that I had set myself up as the only user that could have access to it, and when he said that's where the problem was the lightbulb went off, and it made sense.
Shortly after I set the sharing preferences is when the server crashed. It all makes sense now...
Frank said not to share the entire disk, only portions (share points) of it. I had done this in Panther Server, and Tiger Server and it worked fine, but apparently Leopard Server works a little differently, maybe more secure.
It seems to me that if sharing the entire disk, which is what I needed would cause such a problem there should have been some sort of warning from the operating system, but there wasn't. I had run into this problem several times over the past three weeks since I had started working with Leopard Server, but in each case I ended up re-installing OS X Server and starting over again.
I told him I would try to reboot from the OS X partition (Cub_1) and try it from there.
He asked me to let him know if it worked, and I said I would...
Problem FIX :
I booted back into the partition containing OS X (Cub_1) and did the following via the Terminal.
$ su - root
$ chmod 1775 /
$ reboot
During the reboot process I held down the (OPTION) key, and selected Cub_3 (the os x server partition) and sure enough after a few minutes of holding my breath the login window magically appeared. So I logged in, and did not have to re-install the server. Hallellujah....
This solved the boot hang problem. It is great to finally have an answer. In retrospect it makes sense, but that's why its hindsight...
The reason for sharing the entire disk in my mind was that since I was the only user on the system, it was easier to have one disk mounted on my workstation rather than several folders. It made sense to me, it still does. I don't need a bunch of folders, just one disk is easier... -
Errors upon erasing free space
I have been experiencing particularly bizarre errors since switching to Mac. Two of the strangest are related to erasing free space.
I wasn't aware that OS X could erase free space on its own, until I read the security guide, so I first purchased Shredit X. It worked the first time. The second time, it did not free up the space after the shred. I couldn't even close my programs without resorting to the command line, but I eventually got it to shut down without a hard reset. As I was logging off, the "Reclaiming disk space" process, or whatever it's called, ran as usual, and it appeared to work. My disk space was back to normal. A few days later, I tested it again, to see if it was a fluke, and it did the same thing. I have spoken with the company, and they're not sure what caused it. So I decided to go with Disk Utilities instead.
I started the process last night, and left it going overnight. This morning, I checked to see if it was finished. The login screen that appears after the computer has slept worked fine. However, it was a different story after I logged in. I could not hit any key on the keyboard, and they would trigger the beep that occurs when you hit an invalid key. I could not left-click. The only input that worked at all was a right-click, and it only worked on the application bar at the top of the screen. I was unable to shut down, because I could not close dialog boxes, so I had to hard reset.
It would be nice if there was some explanation for either of these...<EDIT>I don't know if I made this clear enough in my original post: The computer works fine after the restart, and I am even posting from the computer in question right now. The problems with input lasted only between the time the free space wipe finished, and the time when I had to hard reset.</EDIT>
The Knowledge Base article about Disk Utility to which you linked stated this: "When possible, disk permissions should be repaired while started up from a Mac OS X volume (hard disk) that contains updated Mac OS X software, instead of a Mac OS X installation disc." It also mentioned loss of software updates if it was not run from the startup disk. And so, I am a bit leery of running it from the install disk...
I had verified disk permissions a short while ago, so I didn't expect anything out of the ordinary. I was wrong, and there was quite a bit of weirdness with the permissions, almost all of it about not expecting ACL in "System/Library/User Template". I tried to repair disk permissions, and everything looked like it went okay. But when I verified again, it apparently didn't actually repair them.
Will running Disk Utilities from the install disk cause me to lose any data? I have no backups, as I don't own an external hard drive, so I really wouldn't want to lose anything. In particular, my collection of images of album covers, my music collection, my own recordings, and the metadata on the music are all things I'd rather not part with. Should I even be worrying about this?
I'm also not sure what the connection would be between my problem and disk permissions. Could you explain that a bit? I still have no idea why erasing the free space messed with my input devices.
Sorry for the extra-long post, but I figure getting as much info out as possible could help to solve the problem.
That animated image of a bug in your signature is amusing, by the way.
Message was edited by: Your New Favorite -
Secure erase free space on SSHD
I have a 500Gb Toshiba SSHD installed inside my MacBook as a replacement startup drive. Using Disk Utility I have tried to erase/overwrite the free space on this HD. The "Erase Free Space" button is grayed out and hovering gives the following message: "Erasing free space not available on this type of drive".
Is there anything I can safely do to erase free space? Since I have deleted a large number of files from the HD to free up space for future work, I am just trying to be security conscious.
An aside: I have wondered if with a SSHD there is less or even no need to erase free space as there might be no residue in the memory locations to permit recovery like there is with a conventional HD, but this is speculation on my part.
Thanks, JohnA Solid State Device never writes to the same place that you read the data from. The SSD hardware logic always allocates a new pre-cleared sector and writes to that sector, and the hardware maps that sector to the logical offset for the previous sector. The previous sector is released to the SSD hardware to be pre-cleared at some future time for reuse as a place to write.
So zeroing SSD storage just reduces the life of the drive without actually zeroing the data you desire.
If Mac OS X is detecting that your SSHD has an SSD component, it will not do anything to shorten the life of the SSD component by doing things that are not doing what you expect (aka securely erasing data, which the SSD will NOT be doing).
If you are using an SSD type device, the ONLY way to make sure deleted files are secure after deletion is to enable FileVault so that the entire disk is ALWAYS encrypted so that deleted files are just random bits to anyone trying to access the data without the disk encryption keys. -
Why can't the Utility function's 'Erase free space' create temporary file
I've been using erase free space without problem for some time.. Then today when I tried to use it, got an error message to say that erase free space won't work because it can't create a temporary file. I have a 320 GB MBP with 88 GB of free space.
I'd love you forever if you can help me get round this issueHere'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? -
Hi,
Fed up with seeing the spinning beach ball I decided to reformat my MacBook Pro...
After backing up everything on an external hard drive I put in the OSX install DVD, restarted the machine and held down 'C'.
I followed the install prcedure, clicking next a few times etc...
I then went into Utilities > Disk Utility. I chose 7-Pass to erase the Macintosh HD and set it off erasing.
I checked the process an hour in and message on screen read:
Secure disk erase failed with the error:
could not open disk
The internal hard drive no longer exists in the disk utility so I cant retry erasing it.
The only thing that appears in disk utility is the OSX install DVD.
I can't even shut down the mac as everything under the apple tab is greyed out!
I'm guessing this means my hard drive is broken right?
If anyone has any other ideas of what to try I'd really appreciate that.
How do I turn the machine off?
If my hard drive is gone then should I consider getting an SSD drive?
Any recommendations for such a drive would be great.
Hope you can help!Did you partition the drive?
Extended Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (only required for Intel Macs) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Steps 4-6 are optional but should be used on a drive that has never been formatted before, if the format type is not Mac OS Extended, if the partition scheme has been changed, or if a different operating system (not OS X) has been installed on the drive. -
Disk utility error when erasing an external hard drive
Hi,
Not sure if this is the most appropriate fourm list to post this but I thought I'd give it a try.
I am running snow leopard on my MBP and am trying to use disk utility to erase and format an ext. HD. While the disk icon does not show up on the desktop when I connect it to my mac, Disk utility does show the ext. hd in the left column, but no matter what format I try, even just using one partition and selecting zero out all data, I get the following error: "disk erase failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory".
Is the hd dead? Are there other options? I do have disk warrior, version 4.1.1 and it does not regonize the ext. hd.
Please advise.
Thanks,Thanks for the reply. Yes, I did select the ext hd as the one I wanted to erase (my internal hd is my start up drive). After I selected the ext hd, (there is no volume listed under it so the only thing I can select is the hd itself). that is when I selected erase and then Mac journaled, then named the hd and then after selecting erase, I got the error. Also as a matter of note, if I select firstaid, both the repair and verify permissions are dimmed, so I can't even try to repair the disk. That is when I tried disk warrior hoping that could examine the hd, but since it is not mounted on the d/t, it doesn't show as a drive to check. I don't understand why the ext hd shows up in disk utility, but not the d/t. Also of note is the fact that when I connect that ext had to my Mac with a fw cable, a window opens saying that the drive is not readable and do I want to initialize it or ignore. I choose to initialize and that is when I get the error. Also of note is that I have tried both security options of "don't erase data" and "zero out data" and still get the same error.
Hope this clarifies things a bit. -
Disk Utility showing 13+GB Free Space on HD
Hi,
I just got a new Macbook Pro and looking in Disk Utility in the partition tab it's showing over 13GB of "Free space" after the system partition.
Why is this space here, is it really free and is it OK to expand my system partition to fill it?
Thanks
Macbook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.10) 2.4Ghz Santa Rosa 15"It seems to be only Disk Utility that is showing this 13.14GB free space after the other partition, other partition info. tools do not show it at all. Why is this?
Macbook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.10) 2.4Ghz Santa Rosa 15" -
Startup Disk full error message but free space shows 87GB
Hi I have looked through these forums as much as I could but can't find the answer to this. I was working in photoshop CS6 and received the message that my startup disk was almost full. I had just cleared files the day previous and had 87GB of free space. So I restarted after emptying trash etc and tried to get back into photoshop but had the same message, checked my free space and it said 2gb. So I began my search here and saw the issue with .OfflineCache in mail but was never able to locate that file on my computer and after trying several things and failing I checked the info on my Mac hd drive again and it was back to 87gb yet message still coming. I have 8 Gigs of Ram, a 321 Gb hard Drive and running a Mackbook pro 13" with Mac osx Lion 10.7.5. Mid 2010.
Please Help!!Hi,
I would try using GrandPerspective (http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net) to try find out where all the space is being taken up.
Chris -
About Disk Utility's secure erase options
Hello!
I am going to format the drive to reinstall the OS, it's time for a full cleaning!
I see that I have some options to erase the disk:
- Don't erase data
- Zero out data
- 7-Pass Erase
Is there any difference about the performance of the disk before the erase? I don't talk about the possibility or security of the erased data; I ask for the disk speed and smooth.
Thank you.Those options will have no effect on the performance of the drive.
-
Disk Utility Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit.
When Verifying or Repairing Permissions.
No problems found when Repairing the disk.
If I boot from a partition (TechTools) I get the same error. TechTool finds no problems.
Any idea how to fix this?i had to restart my mac, it was frozen-- it then wouldnt load up again
i booted to the install cd and ran a repair disk and i got this error msg a few times, and the repair kept faling
i then gave up and tried the next day and the repair disk finally worked
now im worried i have issues with my hard drive... is this the case?
should i be worried or looking into this? -
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
Available: 4.68 GB
Used: 293.09 GB
This makes no sense to me, since there is very little on the computer (some applications). Also, before I started, I know there was about 260 GB available.
I'd appreciate some advice on how to "free up" the available space that I know must be there.
Thanks!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/ -
I am trying to erase the free space on my hard drive, but part way through I get an error message. I started up my MacBook from the OS-X cd and ran Disk Utility. Selected "Erase Free Space" (7-pass) and after it ran for a few hours, but before it was finished, it quit. This message was displayed: "Disk Utility internal error - Disk Utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk Utility." I tried rebooting, and the same thing happened. I tried running Disk Repair and found no problems. Any suggestions?
Erasing Free Space Will Definitely Help Me and My Situation. Plus I've deleted or transferred files to an External HD, a ton of files(About 75%). And still the hard drive is reading FULL. The Erase Free Space Option just isn't working for some odd reason. So Erase Free Space Is Definitely What I'm Looking For. Any think you can think of, why it's not working properly?? And thanks for you speedy response also.
-
Erase free-space and permissions for applications
Hi all. A couple of quick questions...
1) The disk utility has an "erase free-space option". Is there a corresponding Unix command for this function?
2) What are the proper permissions and ownership for files in the Applications folder? In particular, should these belong to "root"? Is that safe?
Thanks in advance
EricMacintoshHD:~$ ls -ld / /usr/sbin/diskutil
drwxrwxr-t 32 root admin 1190 Nov 27 05:30:28 2006 /
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 85580 Sep 8 18:47:38 2006 /usr/sbin/diskutil
so from an admin-privileged account, you shouldn't even need sudo...
Negatory, my UNIXish friend. As I said before, free space doesn't belong to any directory. / is a directory, hence you cannot access free sectors through it. You must access the raw disk device; directories are a logical construct superimposed on the raw disk device by the OS*.
You can find the raw disk device using either Terminal or Disk Utility. In Terminal, you can use
df /; in Disk Utility, select 'Macintosh HD' in the left panel, and click "Info" in the tool bar. On my system, / is "mounted" on /dev/disk0s03; that's the raw disk device which holds all the disk sectors, whether they are in use or not.Karl-Zimmermans-Computer% df /
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s3 116948016 87894784 28541232 75% /
Karl-Zimmermans-Computer% ls -l /dev/disk0s3
brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 2 28 Nov 23:11 /dev/disk0s3
Karl-Zimmermans-Computer%As you can see, you must be root to write to this device. Hence, you do need to use sudo to erase the free space.
*The "raw disk device" is also a logical construct, imposed by the OS on the disk controller; several "raw disk devices" can reside on the same disk, and can overlap; typically, one such device represents the whole drive, and others are partitions.
Maybe you are looking for
-
How can I reset Safari with all components? On my MacBook with Lion, Safari does not start, does not react immediately after trying to open it. Installing a new Safari does not help. Removing parts of Safari in the Library does not help. Where can I
-
How to bring all columns in a single/first page in report painter
Hi Experts, There are 9 columns in a report painter which includes 1 lead column. 7 columns comes in a first page including lead column and rest 2 columns goes to second page. This report is copied from another report where all columns comes in a fir
-
Hi All, I'm working on a multi-agent simulator in which agents learn an environment while moving through it. Being somewhat new to Java, I'm looking for suggestions on what data structure to use for storing an agents associative memory. To give you a
-
Delay on playback when switching between Sequences (Media Pending)
Hello guys, I'm growing quite frustrated with Premiere CC lately. So I am running CC on a Desktop PC. Core elements are : Asus X-79 Deluxe, Intel i7 4930K, 32gb ram, Geforce Titan. OS (Win 8.1) and CC are running on a SSD. Footage is on internal 7200
-
Hi to every budy, I am new to CRM. I want to learn CRM IC Web Client i am having CRM IDES. For doing the CRM IC Web client what r the softwares we requred and can any one have deatalied steps regarding installation of IC Web client. pls tell process