Disk utility taking forever to "Erase Free Space"!

i am trying to speed up my macbook so i read on http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-speed-up-your-mac-without-spending-any-cash/ that one way to speed up a mac is to "Erase Free Space" and when i did it, it was working fine but now its been "Creating Temperary File" for like 10 minutes and all of my HD is filled up now when i had like 50 GB open before i did this! i cant take a screen shot because when i do, it says it cant save it because there isn't and space open on my HD! help!!!!

guitar4542 wrote:
i am trying to speed up my macbook so i read on http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-speed-up-your-mac-without-spending-any-cash/ that one way to speed up a mac is to "Erase Free Space"
that advice is nonsense. there is absolutely no difference in speed when writing to a space written over by zeros as erase free space does.
and when i did it, it was working fine but now its been "Creating Temperary File" for like 10 minutes and all of my HD is filled up now when i had like 50 GB open before i did this! i cant take a screen shot because when i do, it says it cant save it because there isn't and space open on my HD! help!!!!
what you see is normal. erasing free space takes all of the free space on the drive, temporarily puts it into one huge file and writes it over with zeros. that file is then deleted. while the process takes place (and it can take a very long time). you can't use the computer because you have no free space on the hard drive.

Similar Messages

Disk Utility Crashed during an "erase free space" and now no space exists

So i have no idea how to recover my space after disk utility crashed while I was out today, All I know is I had close to two hundred gigs freed that I wanted to wipe clean after resetting some things in various applications.
I figure I could go find the offending file through some unix-fu. Boy was I wrong
udo find / -type f -size +300000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $9 ": " $5 }'
/System/Library/Speech/Voices/Alex.SpeechVoice/Contents/Resources/PCMWave: 382M
/Users/vahtryn/lotusnotes851_macCZ5S6EN.dmg: 402M
Thats all I got for searching for any file sized 300 meg or more. So, what's the deal? How can I recover this space if I can't find the EFTFile1.sparseimage that's supposed to be created?
I read elsewhere it should be here: ls -lh /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems
ls: /var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems: No such file or directory
Not on my SL install.

Okay, found a solution. Posting it for others who experience this problem.
1. Restart your computer
2. When your computer is completely started back up, check your trash can. If there are recovered files in there, empty trash.
3. If no files are in there, delete a file you don't need, or make a screen shot of something and delete it. Then empty trash.
After doing the above, temporary files were erased. At least that's what worked for me.
Finally: if you haven't done so already, back up your entire system, so in the event you have a complete crash, you will have a back up.

Disk Utility Taking Forever

I am making a second partition on a 300 GB external hard drive. Initially I made the 2nd partition 50 GB. After Disk Utility went through the initial process, a notification popped up that said it wouldn't make the partition and suggested I shrink the size. I started over and made a 30 GB partition. It went through the process and has now been stuck on "verifying disk" for almost two hours. No beach Ball of horror, but the horizontal barber shop poll keeps spinning the blue and white candy cane stripes.
I also had to force quit my Finder window and it didn't relaunch. I am afraid to quit the process - as I may very well crash the drive and lose the data on the original architecture - but I have to leave my current location in about an hour and will have to unplug the drive.
Any suggestions would be appreciated. On a side note, I am creating the partition in order to creat a bootable volume and run Disk Warrior, because my MacBook Pro has been acting funky as of late.
Any suggestions would be extremely helpful. On a side note, I am making the partition in ord

1. I have found through years of experience with partitioning disks
that the process is very similar to playing football and passing the ball.
As the coach would say: "There are 3 things that can happen when you
pass the football, and two of them are bad."
2. Never partition a drive with precious data on it, unless that data is archived
somewhere else, for reasons stated above.
3. I really hope your data is still there, but it may have been gone before you
posted your question.
4. It really wasn't necessary to partition the disk as long as it is Mac OS extended file system.
Simply installing a bootable bare bones SL install on an existing drive only takes about 5GB.
It won't bother data already on the disk, unless the data directories have the same names
as the OS. Even if that is a problem, simply create a new backup directory and drag your
data in it before installing SL.

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.

Erase Free Space SCARE !!!

I decided to erase the free space (50GB) on my eMac using Disk Utility.
On selecting "Erase Free Space" all seemed well and I was given an estimated time of 20 minutes.
At the end of this time, the progress bar was near the end of the line when a new message appeared which said something like "Writing or creating file".
This continued for several minutes and the progress bar did not appear to be moving so I pressed the "Skip" button and for a few more minutes nothing seemed to be happening. It certainly didn't stop.
In desperation I quit Disk Utility even though a warning came up saying it COULD leave my HD unusable.
I discovered that my HD had 0KB of free space.
Using "WhatSize" I found that the missing 50GB were in a "Temporary Items" file.
I tried to trash them but was told one of the items was in use, so I restarted the computer and was able to empty the trash.
The whole computer was fine and back to normal.
However, it was a worrying experience.
What did I do wrong ?
Ian.

I think you'll be fine. All that "erase free space" process does is eliminate all your free space with a big file, then delete that file. If you are really paranoid, you can have it overwrite with random data - seven times. Yes, it can take forever. Because it does fill up your drive, you shouldn't do anything else while it is running. Finally, there is a possibility that your machine could crash if your hard disk is bad. Part of your free space could be a bad place on your disk that you have just never accessed before. This is not likely, but possible.
In the future, you should consider creating a large encrypted disk image for sensitive files. Do not use FileVault. Just create a single disk image that you mount when you want to access your private files. You can even create unencrypted aliases to encrypted files inside the image. Make sure you have secure virtual memory turned on too. If you delete a file from that image, it is already encrypted so nothing to worry about. It is possible that some applications could create temporary files in unencrypted space, but you can't do much about that. This is about as good as you can get.

Can Disk Utility's seven-pass Erase feature do unfixable damage?

I have begun posting about this under a different HD topic, but thought I would open a new thread as this would seem to be an important issue not much remarked on. If anyone has any ideas how to fix this, they are most welcome. First, my cautionary tale.
About ten days ago I removed a lot of financial data from my laptop. I also had consolidated all my passwords into a program called Pastor, so I removed the other insecure files where this info was previously stored (like from my email client, and from a word file). When I emptied the Trash, however, I neglected to use the Secure Empty function, and was suddenly seized with anxiety lest my laptop fall into the wrong hands. So I opened up Disk Utility, and clicked on Erase Free Space, using the 7-pass process which is highly secure.
DU warns you that this process will take 7 times longer than the single-pass erase (makes sense), and when it started up, it gave an estimated time as 4hrs something. When I got up next morning, some 14 hours having passed, it was still working. I just couldn't wait any longer and hit the Stop button. A warning came up saying, "Interrupting this operation may damage a disk or render it unusable." That sounded so extreme that I discounted it. I thought Apple was being a bit Nervous Nellie about it--I mean, all it's doing is writing zeros all over the thing, what's the big deal? BAD IDEA.
What I didn't understand was that the seven-pass process doesn't empty your HD, it fills it up. With zeros, to be sure, but it fills it up. Upon completion, if I understand correctly, it resets itself so that all those zeros are read as empty space. If you interrupt it before completion, it does not reset and sees all that space as full. NOT GOOD.
My HD was now sluggish, programs were quitting unexpectedly, some wouldn't start, and others gave the Error-50 message. Worst of all, Word was saying "can't create or save this file because memory is almost full" or "Cannot save file. Your disk may be damaged or write-protected." And yet the system profile indicates 40GB of free space.
I have tried the following: Repair Permissions (from the Home HD); repeating the Erase procedure using single-pass to completeion; resetting PRAM; Safe Boot and then Repairing Permissions from within Safe Mode; changing Startup Disk to my external and running Repair Disk and Repair Permissions from there; rebooting and running Repair Permissions from the Home drive once more.
That was my latest attack on the problem. Repair Disk is finding no problems, and Repair Permissions is finding nothing to repair. At this moment, the computer seems okay, and maybe this is over. But several times in the past week it has seemed okay only for the problems to start up again, which is why I'm writing this now in case I'm looking at complete drive failure in a day or two. Here are my questions:
Has anyone here had experience with an aborted 7-pass Erase function? Does it truly damage the disk?
Should I try running the 7-pass Erase again, this time letting it go to completion no matter how long it takes? (In order to make sure it properly resets.) Or is that risking making things worse?
Is there some other diagnostic test I cam make to determine just wherein the problem lies?
Am I looking at buying a new HD (the current one was expensive and is only a year old)?
I always get good advice from this forum, so I'm hoping someone knows what to do. Any advice much appreciated.
Giles

DiskWarrior is your best bet for curing Disk Problems that nothing else can.
Other than that, if you can afford to erase and reinstall...
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the Erase tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Highlight the drive, select Erase Tab, then Format type... MacOS Extended Journalled, select the Security Options button, choose Zero Out Data, Erase... after completion hopefully you'll be able to have a clean install.

Erase free space function of Disk Utility

Hi all,
I've read some of the discussions about the problems that can result from using Disk Utility to permanently delete items that have been emptied from the Trash (and which were not "securely" emptied). Before I use the Disk Utility function, I'd appreciate some advice:
1. I have an iBook G4, running Mac OS 10.4.11. My hard disk has a capacity of 55 GB with 30 GB available. Does the capacity available matter, and is mine sufficient?
2. Will I be given an option on overwriting the files 0, 7, or 35 times, and should I choose 7?
3. How long is this operation likely to take?
4. Shall I just start the operation and then not touch the computer for a few hours, or overnight, and hope for the best??
5. A final question (a stupid one, I hope!) -- only those files which were put in the trash will be deleted, right?? Not anything else?!
I am quite worried about taking the step because, if things go wrong, I won't have a means of contacting the Apple support forum as this is the only computer in our household.
I am planning on giving this iBook to a nephew in six months or so, and am gradually cleaning it up for that purpose. But I'm not ready to "zero it out" entirely and I am hoping not to lose anything currently on my hard drive following the "erase free space" operation, or to have to reboot from the original CDs.
If the operation is successful, I will then remember to always use the "Secure Empty Trash" option when deleting future files. I'm assuming that, if I do that, I should have no concerns about giving the laptop away -- correct?
As you can tell, I'm not very computer savvy, and I'd be very grateful for help. Thank you!

Open Disk Utility, Highlight your drive on the left, then on the right bottom you'll see Verify Disk & below that Repair Disk grayed out because you can't reopair the HD yo're booted from, if it does need Repair...
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Select your Mac OS X volume.
5. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then try a Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes

I need to erase free space on my hard drive. But when I am in disk utility the format and name are pale as is the erase free space button so I cannot erase free space.

My start up disk is full. I have been through my computer and erased a lot of music and video to free some space. I then went to disk utility to erase free space and find that the erase free space button is pale and therefore won't work. Nor can I select or deselect MacOS extended journaled.
Advice please?!

Recovering Disk Space
If you have less than 20% disk space then it is time to roll up your sleeves and search for what you can delete and what you can offload to another disk.
If you have less than 10 GB you definitely need to delete or offload some files or purchase a lager disk or SSD (see below). You may want to maintain at least 20 GB of free space so when your disk starts filling again it will have some room before it hits that 10 GB mark again. More headroom is better. If you let the space fall much below 9 GB you might not be able to boot your machine.
Initial easy steps to gain disk space:
- Delete all files in the Downloads folder.
Empty the Trash.
- Start iPhoto.
Empty its trash.
Restart.
- Restart in Safe Mode:
Restart the computer.
As soon as you hear the chime press and hold the right shift key.
Be patient. Hold it down until you see the Apple icon.
Empty the trash.
Restart in normal mode.
- Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
    Hold the option key down and click "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar.
    Select "Library" from the drop down menu.
    Library > Mail > V2 > Mailboxes
    Delete "Recovered Messages", if any.
- Empty the Trash.
- Restart.
- Re-index your system disk (Macintosh HD):
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409
Time Machine Snapshots:
If your disk is 80% full that is normal. Time Machine uses up to 80% of the disk space for local snapshots. To get rid of these snapshots simply plug in your Time Machine backup drive and run a backup. See About Time Machine's 'local snapshots' on Mac notebooks: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4878 and What are Local Snapshots? http://pondini.org/TM/30.html .
If you are concerned that the “Other” category of disk usage is taking too much space and for information on deleting files then look here: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5142
Backup:
Run a Time Machine (or other) backup since you are about to delete and move files and you may need to recover from any inadvertent mistakes or decisions. You will need one external hard drive for your Time Machine (or other) backup and a second if you plan to offload some files. (See suggestions for where to purchase hard drives at the end of this message.)
For more about backups:
Time Machine Basics: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
Most commonly used backup methods:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3045
Methodology to protect your data. Backups vs. Archives. Long-term data protection:
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031
Deleting files:
Then use the free application OmniDiskSweeper http://www.omnigroup.com/more to explore your volume in descending order by size so you can attack the problem from the top down, deleting the largest unwanted files first. Delete with caution and do not delete any system files. Remember to empty the trash after trashing the files.
Additional reference on freeing disk space:
http://pondini.org/OSX/DiskSpace.html
Offloading files:
Consider moving some of the no-often-used large files or directories to an external disk. Use ODS again to find them. As noted above this will be at least your second hard drive. Your first one(s) is/are for your Time Machine (or other) backup(s). Do not offload files onto a Time Machine disk.
Format the second drive as Mac OS Extended (journaled). Using OWS to find large files/folders and copy them from the system drive to the external hard drive and delete them from your internal drive.
Then  > System Preferences > Time Machine > Options… > Remove the offload HD name from the exclusions list.
Now both your system disk and your external offload disk will be backed up onto your Time Machine disk.
From: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
To move your iTunes Music folder to another disk or partition:
To change the location of your iTunes Music folder, carefully follow the instructions in the AppleCare® Knowledge Base document "iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Music folder."Additional information can be found in iTunes Help.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.thexlab.com/105/ 00000849.html
Laptop users may want to consider having two iTunes libraries: a small library of current favorites on their computer, while their complete library resides on an external hard drive. Utilities like iTunes Library Manager enable you to easily have multiple iTunes libraries you can use with your account. https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7689/itunes-library-manager
To move your iPhoto Library folder to another disk or partition:
To move the iPhoto Library folder to a new location, employ the instructions in the AppleCare Knowledge Base document from http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506 corresponding to the version of iPhoto you are using. Additional information can be found in iPhoto Help.
Laptop users may want to consider having two iPhoto libraries: a small library of current, favorite photographs on their computer, while their complete library, or archives of older photos are saved on an external hard drive. Utilities such as iPhoto Buddy and iPhoto Library Manager enable you to have multiple iPhoto libraries that you can use with your account.
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/12175/iphoto-buddy
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7158/iphoto-library-manager
Hardware — Bigger disk/SSD:
If your system has upgradeable storage then if you are still tight on disk space consider larger storage. If you have a disk consider replacing it with a one TB disk. Check out a one terabyte HGST 7K1000 7200 rpm, SATA III drive from OWC http://eshop.macsales.com ($100). If you have an SSD consider increasing its capacity to 240 or 480 GB. A standard 240 GB SSD would cost from $200 to $280. See OWC and Crucial: http://www.crucial.com/ for options. OWC sells 120, 240 and 480 GB SSD upgrades for MacBook Airs. A 240 GB upgrade costs $265.   http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/ . If your Mac is under warranty or AppleCare replacing the SSD will void the warranty.
PlotinusVeritas gives some great suggestions for purchasing external hard drives in this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5602141?tstart=0

Need help with the "Erase Free Space" disk utility

When I use Disk Utilities to Erase Free Space (I use the single zero mode) I get a message telling me,
"Your Startup Disk is almost Full,
you need to make more space available
on your startup disk by deleting files."
This occurs about 90% of the way through the process (based on where the blue bar is at the time) during the "Creating Temporary File" portion of the process. I know from past experience that I will remain in this portion of the process forever unless I press the "Skip" button to complete the process.
My questions,
1. What is the startup disk and why is it full?
2. What should I do about the Your Startup Disk is Almost Full warning?
3. Is my computer actually talking about "regular" disk space (I currently have about 9GB of 80GB free but have seen this warning with 30GB available as well).
4. When I press "Skip" and the blue bar continues to complete the process, have I actually erased free space?
PBG4 15" 80GB HD 1GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4)

The Disk Utility does the erase by creating large temporary files, writing to them, then deleting them. While doing this, OSX may notice the lack of free space on the disk. This is normal, but could cause problems if you are also running some applications that want some disk space. If you let if finish, it should delete the temporary files and free the disk space.
I prefer to run the Disk Utility from the Tiger install disk when doing a Verify, Repair, or Erase Free Space on my boot disk, so I know I won't be interfering with anything running.

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!

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".

Disk Utility - Erase Free Space

Hey Forum,
I am using mac snow leopard on my macbook and I wanted to erase the free space on my hard drive, so is the zero-out free space enough, or do I need the 7-pass erase free space. I just wanted more disk space, thats it. So can anyone tell me what are each options for? And do i need to 7-pass erase if i just wanted more disk space?
I await your favorable replies.
Thank you.
Regards.
Ala.

As The hatter says, the erase free space option has nothing to do with creating more free disk space -- the space is already free.
If you are confused about this, just open Disk Utility to the "Erase" tab & click the purple question mark at the bottom of the window. This will open Disk Utility Help to the topic *Erasing disks*. Refer to the last subject, *Securely erasing empty space* & if necessary click the link below it to go to the help topic *Erasing free disk space*, which explains this function in more detail.
FWIW, should you ever need to use this security function, a one pass secure erase is probably adequate to make the data unrecoverable.

7-pass, or zero out-Disk Utility Erase Free Space

Hey Forum,
I want to clear my erase free space on disk utility. And I am confused, whether to use 7-pass or zero-out? Any suggestions which one to use. Is zero out enough, or is 7-pass too much, any suggestions of whether to use either of them is appreciated, thank you.
Ala.
P.S. What are zero-out, 7-pass, and the 35 thing for and their differences?

There is no need to post the same question twice, especially in the same forum.
Regarding what you can find with Google, an overly simplified or out of date treatment of the topic may lead you to the wrong conclusions. For example, the DoD 5220-22M standard is obsolete (& never recommended a 7 pass erase to begin with) & the 35 pass erase was intended for old, pre-2001 drives.
For modern ATA drives like you will find in any Mac capable of running Snow Leopard, one or at most a few zero data passes will do all any software-based secure erase method can do.
If you need verification of that, refer to the Epilogue section of Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory, the seminal paper on the subject by the author of the 35 pass method.

Disk Utility Erase Free Space Option Nonexistant

Have an iMAC 1 GHZ PowerPC G4 256 MB DDR SDRAM OS 10.3.9. According to various google results I should be able to call up Disk Utilities>Partition>Erase>Erase Free Space. Its not there. (Its exactly where it should be on a nearby G5 running 10.5.8.).
It will allow me to erase the entire disk or either of two partitions but the Erase Free Space isn't just grayed out, it is completely missing.
1) The hard drive was partitioned at some point in the past I think to get around some admin thing. One partition has 51 out of 60 GB filled, the other has 12.4 of 16.3 GB filled.
2) Don't ask about the admins, my Entourage has been broken for 9 months - I am not joking.
3) My computer knowledge is spotty - you've been warned.
Help!

Try starting the iMac in Target Disk Mode while attached to one of your newer computers with a firewire cable. This basically makes the iMac an external hard drive. I've not tried this but you should then be able to use a newer version of Disk Utility on that drive.
[How to use FireWire target disk mode|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1661] includes description of hardware and software requirements.
[What to do if your Mac doesn't enter FireWire Target Disk Mode|http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75414], also read about [Open Firmware Password Protection|http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/openfirmwarepassword.html] which can disable Target Disk Mode.
I'm not a technician but I don't think it "misses" areas, it's just more a matter of covering up what was written there before. Think of it as you write something on a piece of paper, then erase it and write something down in the same space. If you look closely you can see what was written there before. Now erase that again and write something else. It'll be pretty difficult to make out what was written there the very first time. Do that 7 times and it will be very, very, very difficult. Do that 32 times and it will be impossible. However, all that erasing and writing will take its toll on the paper and take a long time. I'd say anything more than a erase once would really have to be justified by very sensitive data. Anybody wanting to recover the data would have to use pretty specialized equipment.

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!

Disk utility taking forever to "Erase Free Space"!

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