Disk Utility - no erase?

Hello. When I select the 128 GB APPLE SSD or Macintosh HD entry in the left column of the Disk Utility, the Erase and Security Options keys are greyed out. When I select the 128 GB APPLE SSD and navigate to Partition tab, information within this parameter yields the following: "This is the startup partition. You can't erase it." So why do YouTube video's show me otherwise? Stumped...need help?

LT83 wrote:
I tried that, the system wont let me erase anything...everything is greyed out.
So you booted the computer from the Recovery HD partition by holding down the Command+r keys at startup and then selected Disk Utility and clicked Continue.
These are the screens you should be seeing if you are booting to the Recovery HD partition.

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When I delete files on a USB, it doesn't free up memory on the stik. I find I have to empty the entire stik, use Disk Utility to 'erase' it, then transfer back the files I removed to free up all the space on the stik. Is this the best practice?

It frustrates me that if I delete a file from a USB, it doesn't free up the memory on the stik. I have been removing all the files from the stik, opening Disk Utility and erasing the empty USB. That frees up the entire stik. Then I have been transferring back the files I removed from the stik. The result is that I have memory available to use again. It seems to me this is an unnecessarily complicated and time consuming way to get the result. Is there a shorter way to do this?

Hello Horst,
Thank you for the question. Have you been emptying your trash after deleting the items? For the item to be removed from your USB device, you will need to empty the trash on your MacBook Pro after you delete the items, as described in the featured discussion below. Your USB device will still need to be connected when you do this:
Choose Empty Trash from the Finder menu. Unlike Windows, the trash needs to be emptied manually for any drive other than one mounted through the network.
Can't delete off my USB drive
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1946841
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Sheila M.

Using Disk Utility Secure Erase Makes it hang?

Hi, I wanted to erase part of my drive (I was doing a generalized clean-up). I tried using the Disk Utility Secure Erase option. Even going with the single pass -- I'm just cleaning off free space, you know? ANyhow, it seems to hang a lot. The other functions on it seem to work ok. I looked at the force quit option and it says it isn't responding.
I did try just leaving it alone for a really long time, but unless I am doing the 35-pass erase it shouldn't take all night (which it did at one point and it still wasn't done).
(Computer is a MacBook late 2008 13" aluminum)
I had it do a repair and after I forced it to quit it said it did find bad areas of the disk and repaired them, or so it said.
But then I tried a verify and it seemed to crash again. So I get the sense there is something weird or fishy with Disk Util for 10.5.8. Any thoughts? My copy of TechTool works fine, it seems. Disk Util seems a bit unreliable right now, and I don't want to damage anything. But I also want an option to clean off the disk if I ever sell the computer or something like that. (I've been ID theft-ed once already, I'd rather not go through that again).

MacBook Pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os
http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro

Disk Utility's "Erase Free Space" screwed me over big time. Help Please.

Hey, I have a serious dillema. I free'd up disk space on my mac by transfering files to an external drive, and then used Disk Utility to erase unused disk space to do a thorough cleaning. Now it seems that out of thin air, Disk Utility said my Mac is out of disk space....it basically filled up my hard drive with 370GB's of god knows what.
Here's exactly what I did, step by step:
Basically, I wanted to clean up my hard drive a bit, as I was using about 500GB's out of my 750GB HD (on my MBP 10.6.8)
-Before I did this test, I did a verify + repair disk permissions, I also organized my computer's files... and just to be safe, I booted up from the D key so I could do an extended hardware test to see if everything was running smoothly. I then zapped the PRam. This was my pre-clean maintenence check.
-Then I transferred all of my files onto my external disk.
-After this was done, I dumped the files (that I used to transfer to my External) into the trash bin.
-I emptied the trash bin.
-Now I free'd up hundreds of GB's of space.
-It said that I had 376 GB's of free space in my hard drive. Yay.
Now here where it all went wrong:
-I heard that if you go into Disk Utility, and click on "Erase Free Space" that it goes over all the delted files (that aren't actually permanently deleted) and it permanently deletes them so that it frees up all the loose ends on your mac. I didn't want any ghost files, or any old installs or whatever...so I thought, yes.
Now...Disk Utility was doing this for me....and 2 hours later....it said that I was out of disk space. Disk Utility froze around the 90% completion-mark when it was "Creating Volume" (or something like that) and I had to quit Disk Utility.
Then, I exited....went onto my desk top and checked my Hard Drive.
It said that I had ZERO KB's available.
My hard disk was completely full. How is this even possible? I had 376 GB's of EMPTY space 2 hours earlier.
I tried to go into all of my files to see if there were any duplicates made..I checked terminal to see what went wrong, I checked console...I searched, and I searched...and nothing.
What. The. Heck.
Can someone please, please help me?

Boot from your installation disc, erase the internal drive in Disk Utility, reinstall OS X, copy the files from your backup, and then run Software Update.

Disk Utility Problems - Erase Free Space

Today I decided to use disk utility to "Erase free space " on my MacbookPro. During the process it said it was creating a temporary file!
This took about 2 hours then the application stopped responding, so I clicked skip and ended up doing a force quit!
Unfortunately, this task did not complete but it seems to have added over 10GB to my hard drive.
Any ideas how I can find the file and delete it or should I consider restoring my Mac to yesterday using my Time machine backups.
Thanks
Keith

However, does anyone have any advice on how to use the "Erase Free Space " Utility
This option should only be used when you've insecurely deleted a file you meant to securely delete, and should not be used on a FAT32 drive with 4GB or more free space.
(57218)

Disk utility not erasing used space on external

Info on the 1 TB Lacie External drive reads:
Capacity 999.87GB
Available 999.21 GB
Used 663.6 GB
Why are the 663.6 GB used?
Please read what I've already done:
Deleted all items through finder
Emptied the trash
Securley emptied the trash
Erased the drive in disk utility
Erased free space in disk utility
Secure Erased the drive with the "most secure" US Department of Defense settings in disk utility
Erased and reformatted drive with a different format - MS-DOS (FAT)
Erased drive and formatted back to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
Tried some steps involving the terminal and lost my mind (if you give me terminal answers please make it copy and pasteable).
Yet still...663.6 GB used.

Fair enough. I'm selling it though. Do these residual system files contain anything that would allow someone to roll the drive back and access my deleted data?

I formatted my mac and after installation went to disk utility to erase

hello
i wanted to get rid of everything so i backed up all the files i needed in an external hard drive
and then i shut down the mac and restarted inserting the 2 cd's after i was done i went to disk utility
and erased free space 35 times ,during this time i cannot update browsers, programs,and cannot download anything or create folders.
is that temporary and should i wait till it's done?
also what i read that it only erases items that were erased from the trash what about all the other files i had not put in the trash will that be somewhere in the system?
thanks
Message was edited by: cajred

If you use Disk Utility and choose the Erase Free Space option for any disk volume, it only overwrites the space Mac OS X lists as being unused. You choose this option to prevent someone from being able to recover a deleted file from your hard drive. When you empty the Trash normally, the actual data is not removed from the drive, only the pointer that tells the operating system where that data is located is removed, so it's possible to still access that data until the OS overwrites it. It's not just emptying the Trash, but unless something goes wrong, it should not erase the files on the drive you wish to keep.
And yes, it will indeed take a long time.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer

Using Disk Utility to erase Hard Drive

Hi All
I just bought a new external hard drive and am using Disk Utility to erase and format it. I did not know for sure if erasing the hard drive was the right thing to do. Anyway I set up the Volume as follows from the mac help instructions:
1.format OS extended journaled
2.Install OS9 disk driver.
3.("Zero all data" and "8 Way Random Write Format"). So it has been running for about 3 hours now and is only 1/8 of the way writing 0's to disk.
My question is should I continue on and just let it finish up? At the rate it is going It might be done by sometime tomorrow.
Or can I stop the erasing process without hurting the hard drive.
Then start disk utility erasing the hard drive without this Zero all data.
Thanks much

Just to confirm your impression, S. Frigolett: yes, everything should be fine now.
Zeroing a drive is advisable if you have reason to believe there may be bad data storage blocks on it; zeroing identifies those blocks and prevents them from being used (because using them would result in lost or corrupt data). A simple erase doesn't do that, but on a new drive straight from the factory there is no reason to think it's necessary.
The 8 way random write option is for people who have extremely sensitive data to erase from a drive that may pass into other hands, and who want to be sure that no one short of the NSA will have any chance of recovering any of that data. A new, empty drive has nothing on it that even the NSA could recover, so there's no reason to erase it that thoroughly.

Using Disk Utility to Erase an external drive freezes Disk Utility?

When I use Disk Utility to Erase an external drive, Disk Utility freezes indefinitely and the action is not performed.
How do I fix this?

To use it on your MBP you need to set the OPTION when you partition it so that it will be the Intel GUID partition scheme, then set the partition(s) you want.
If it is hanging or failing, that can be caused by bad sectors where the partition table has to be written. You might need to zero the drive. If you have a PC, then use Maxtor's tools to reformat and test the drive.
PPC Macs use one partition/format scheme, IntelMacs use another, and Windows a 3rd.

Can I use Disk Utility to erase Apple TV hard drive?

Can I use Disk Utility to erase Apple TV hard drive?

I don't know, but I doubt it can be done using Disk Utility. I suggest you consult the user manual for it or see if there is a Reset option in the onscreen menues. If you don't have a manual, then you will find one at http://support.apple.com/manuals.

My external hard drive accidentally switched off during Disk Utility's "erase free space" process. I restarted the external hard drive and Disk Utility, but now I get the "couldn't mount disk" error when trying to finish the erase. Please help!

My external Lacie Quadra hard drive accidentally switched off in the middle of "erase free space", and when I switched it back on Disk Utility was hanging. So I Force Quit Disk Utility and restarted it. Now when I try to erase I get
"Secure Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn’t unmount disk."
But "erase free space" seems to work...
What can I do? I'm erasing as I'm giving the drive to someone else and I wanted to wipe it clean.
Also should I use "erase" or "erase free space" if I want to wipe the drive clean?
Please help!

Sorry I don't really understand.... there are no partitions on the drive. How do I repartition it?
And should I use "erasing free space" or "erase" for wiping clean my drive of everything? Erase seems to be faster last tiem I tried.
Thanks!

Disk Utility To Erase Hard Drive

I've been trying to use Disk Utility to zero out an external hard drive before selling it. The problem is that all of the zero out options take an incredibly long time. I was experimenting with the different zero pass options within the security options section. I selected don't erase data and started it. The estimated time was 30 hours. I then tried the 35-Pass Erase. The estimated time was 500 something hours. Is this normal? The drive I want to erase is an 80GB Lacie drive connected via USB to an iMac G4 15 inch.

iMac LCD (iLamp), 800mhz.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac800fp.html

Disk Utility - secure erase process does not complete

Help, please!
It is taking "for ever" for Disk Utility* to securely** erase (a) the 37.25 GB hard drive in my G4 Powerbook (while booted from a startup disk), and (b) an external 55.9 GB firewire hard drive (connected to a 17" G4 iMac).
After more than a day, the progress bar for the Powerbook is only about half way over, and the progress bar for the external hard drive is only about 1/7 of the way over. (See the notes marked * and ** below.)
Additionally, the note next to the progress bar for the Powerbook has changed from "Writing random data to disk" to "Creating partition map".
Yesterday when I tried this process previously, after a very similar situation developed I quit Disk Utility on both machines and started the process again - so now the situation is about the same as before I quit Disk Utility yesterday.
* I am using Disk Utility v10.4.4 to erase the external drive. I am using Disk Utility off the boot disk for OS X v 10.3.3 for an iBook to erase the Powerbook - but I can't see what version at the moment because the pointer is currently a spinning "beach ball".
**By "securely erase", I mean I selected the option to write random data eight times to each location.
(Prior to starting the secure erasure process, I had Disk Utility write zeroes at all locations - and that process did completed within a few minutes for each hard drives.)

MacBook Pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks/macbook_pro
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os
http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro

Can I partition a drive in Disk Utility without erasing files?

Hello,
According to the third screenshot, I have the option of partitioning an external drive without losing files already on it, but when I try to do so, I only get a message indicating that it will erase the disk: http://osxdaily.com/2009/11/20/resize-partitions-in-mac-os-x-with-disk-utility/
I backuped my internal drive with Time Machine and I would now like to partition it so that only one half is for Time Machine purposes. If it's possible to do that without starting from scratch, if I decide later to eliminate that partition, would that require losing any files?
Thanks.

You may find your answer here. Have a look around.
http://pondini.org/OSX/DU.html

Copy disk utility to erase G3

I have an old G3 that I would like to erase but cannot find original installation CDs to use disk utility. I'm unable to startup from techtool cd, and wonder what else to do. Is there something I can download to a cd - disk utility,for OS9, say - to do the trick?
Thankyou

Hi dsvphd-
It sounds like your best bet would be to look around for the OS9 Full Install disk if you can't find the restore disks for your machine...look for the white disk with the big orange 9 on it-it should have what you need to load on just about any G3 model.
If you need to salvage any info, boot up on the OS9 disk(once you've got one) move any info to another medium(CD-RW,DVD-RW) and then i'd recommend a clean install.Hope this helps.

Disk Utility - no erase?

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