Empty Trash vs. Secure Empty

What is the difference between normally emptying the trash, and going to finder, file, secure empty trash? Which should i do?

You can delete files, folders, and other items on your disk that you no longer need.
You may want to store a backup copy or an archive of important items if you are trying to clear space on your hard disk for other things.
Drag the items to the Trash (at the end of the Dock).
Any files or folders you drag to the Trash remain there until you empty the Trash. If you change your mind about something, you can still retrieve it from the Trash if you haven't emptied it yet. Click the Trash icon to open the Trash window, then drag items back to your home folder.
Choose Finder > Empty Trash.
Even after you empty the Trash, deleted files may still be recovered by using special data-recovery software. To delete files so that they cannot be recovered, choose Finder > Secure Empty Trash. Files deleted in this way are completely overwritten by meaningless data. This may take some time, depending on the size of the file. To prevent the recovery of files you deleted previously, open Disk Utility (in Applications/Utilities), choose Help > Disk Utility Help, and search for help on erasing free disk space.
If an item is locked, you cannot put it in the Trash. Select the item and choose File > Get Info, then deselect the Locked checkbox in the General pane. If you do not own the item, you may need to provide an administrator's name and password to put the item in the Trash.
Press the Option key when you choose Empty Trash to prevent the warning message from appearing. You can also turn off the warning in the Advanced pane of Finder Preferences.
-Bmer
Mac Owners Support Group
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Similar Messages

  • After i empty trash (the secure empty doesn't work either), the system does not reclaim the free space.

    After i empty trash (the secure empty doesn't work either), the system does not reclaim the free space.
    I need to run the erase free space option from the disk utility every time...which is really annoying and time consuming.
    Any ideas how to solve this?
    Thanks in advance =)

    There is a thing in iPhoto whereby the first time you delete a photo it asks if you want to delete or just remove from the album, something like that.  Unfortunately it is one of these things with a "don't ask me again" checkbox.  Now, "deleting" photos only removes them from the album they are in.  To actually trash them I must then go to "all photos" and find them, to send them to the trash.   To help find them, what I do is rename them zzz or something, so sorting them will get them to the bottom of my collection.  Just maybe your photos are still lurking around?

  • Empty trash vs. secure empty trash

    What is the difference between Empty Trash and Secure Empty Trash?

    Is there a difference in the amount of space freed up? 
    I am trying to clear up disk space and have been doing secure empty in the hopes more space is freed up.  But if there isn't, it takes forever so I will stop emptying the trash securey.  Thank you!

  • Why does empty trash automatically Secure Empty Trash?

    Hi
    Ive searched many forums but cant find an answer.
    Whenever I empty my trash (running latest Snow Leopard), it automatically secure empties it. I dont want this as it takes too long (I know its more secure etc) however I am time poor and really need to just empty trash normally!
    Any ideas would be most welcome!
    Thanks

    Choose Preferences from the Finder menu, click on Advanced, and turn it off.
    (51488)

  • Difference between "Empty trash" and "Secure Empty trash"

    Hi everyone,
    Today I used the "Secure Empty Trash" function by pressing the options key while "right clicking" on the trash. And in the message it said that if I empty the trash that way, I won't be able to recover the data. Which is what I wanted and is ok. But then the way it's said makes you think that if you don't do it that way then the normal "Empty Trash" doesn't really empty the trash and gives you the possibility of take the data back even after emptying the trash.
    I know some programs can help you do that. Either they recuperate the data after being installed separately or it's a sort of backup program like some by Norton on Windows were basically it backs up the Windows trash. But my question is, when they say with the "Empty Trash" message that you can recuperate the data, does it mean with one of those external programs or is there a hidden folder somewhere on Mac OS X where I can find all the stuff that ever went in my trash ?
    Thanks for your help !

    emptying the trash the normal way, deletes the reference of where the files exist on the hard disk, and shows the space these files occupy as empty space, now its deleted, and you can use whatever space these files used before deleting them, but you can use some pro apps that recover lost data, specially in case of mistaken deletion, as long as the sectors these files used on the hard disk were not used to store on by other data.
    while emptying the trash securely, does the same of normal emptying but it makes an additional step of over writing the sectors of the hard used by these data an amount of times, so its impossible for pro apps that recover data to read anything was stored on the hard disk after secure deletion.

  • Secure Empty Trash vs. Empty Trash

    I just finished editing many gigs of old video footage and I am ready to delete them. Should I use the Secure Empty Trash-In the Finder (which will most likely take a long time to delete) versus just Empty Trash...I know S.E.T. will completely remove the files which make them unrecoverable. If I delete by using just the empty trash...am I still taking up HD space?
    Thanks...
    Henri

    Hello,
    When you empty the trash, the files are still physically there. But, the space they occupied is marked as available for use. So, they are not taking-up any space. That space is immediately freed, and made available for use by the next program or file that needs it.
    But, because it is stored magnetically, that file can be retrieved by manually (or with a special program) going back and locating where that file was stored and re-assigning a name and a pointer to it.
    The only difference between regular empty trash and secure-empty trash, is that the secure option will immediately over-write that deleted file's space with garbage a couple of times to make it more difficult for someone to recover (or undelete).
    That is the only difference. Otherwise, the space is still storing magnetic information regardless of which method you use. But, it is not wasting space either way. The space is marked as free, and will be used as needed.
    I hope this helps.
    Let us know if you have other questions.
    P.S., if you'd like, go ahead and click the "Helpful" or "Solved" buttons on any of the posts / replies above if you feel they were helpful or adequately answered your question.

  • Can't empty trash, tried secure (option-cmd-shift-del) & Terminal

    Have had this issue for a while and searched the Community for answers before.
    Had over a million items in the Trash (after trying to clean stuff up) - I know, I know.
    I usually do the Secure Empty Trash, with no problems, but now that so much was in the Trash, it kept quitting the emptying process, and not actually emptying.
    Then I tried the Option-Command-Shift-Delete, and am down to about 17,000+ items.
    When I try to empty Trash now, it empties about 500-1000 items, then stops/quits emptying.
    Then if I try it again, it counts up the items to empty and I still have that same 17k+ items.
    Today I tried the Terminal commands, but the trash was still full when I signed back in...
    So now what?
    Thanks.
    Diana

    Relaunch the Finder, then from the Finder menu bar, select
    Finder ▹ Preferences... ▹ Advanced
    and uncheck the box marked
    Empty Trash securely
    Try again to empty the Trash.

  • Are there any advantages of using Secure Empty Trash over regular Empty Trash?

    Are there any advantages of using Secure Empty Trash over regular Empty Trash?

    If you are going to run around with sensitive files on your file system, you might be better off using a whole disk encryption so that every file is encrypted, any deleted file contains encrypted contents.  As long a no one can access your files using your encrytpion keys, all your data is secure.
    Also secure delete is not really going to do much on a Solid State Drive, and again whole disk encryption would be a better choice.
    For a moderate amount of data, secure erase does not take too much time. But if you have a ton of file and/or a few really large files to erase, secure erase can take a long time to complete as it is doing multiple pass to write and overwrite the file's storage with patterns of data that make it extremely difficult to recover the original data.  That takes time.
    Finally, if you have been updating a document, previous editions may have been given over to free storage as new versions are written, such that when you decide to erase the file you may only be doing secure erase on the most recent copy.

  • How do I change trash from secure empty to just empty?

    How do I change trash from secure empty to just empty?

    Under Finder Preferences...
    The "Advanced" tab...
    Good luck,
    Clinton

  • Securely emptying trash after having emptied trash (unsecurely)

    Hello. I've emptied my trash as I'm parting with my MacBook, but following this I realised that I should have securely emptied the trash. Now I want to restore the emptied trash for the purpose of securely emptying the trash, but it seems quite impossible. Is there an easy way to do this?
    I would wipe the mac but I don't have the OS CDs as they weren't sold with the Mac as everything was pre-installed.

    Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:
    Confidential to Julian Assange and Ed Snowden: YOU guys need to do the 35 passes with random data.
    Faster and safer to replace the drive, that 35x takes weeks to complete and isn't available anymore only on Snow Leopard and for a time hard drives were small.
    Brian Manning started out with 35x, but it was taking so long he canceled and went with 0x and that's not strong enough as the government used magnetic techniques to read the deleted data.
    7x is DOD approved method, that's what Secure Empty Trash does by default.
    However the problem with that is it only does what's in the Trash, not hidden files, caches etc., for a better method the entire drive or account should be scrubbed with free space 0x-7x.

  • Emptying Trash w/o Empty Trash

    i'm the type of person who like to keep his trash files for a period of time until i'm comfortable with emptying it. my ipod is set to diskmode and i use it to transfer files from home to work, some files large and small. is there a way to "empty trash" for just the ipod leaving my normal trash intact? i've been dieing to know if this was possible without a 3rd party app; secondly can i selectively empty trash by "emptying" certian files only??? (again w/o a 3rd party app)
    i've done some searching, everyone seems to just say 'empty trash' but that is my problem, i only want to empty my ipod's trash. i have a 3G40gb.
    thanx

    Same advice I gave in your other post: search a compendium such as MacUpdate for "trash"; you'll find at least a couple of third-party addons that will allow deletion of trash on specific volumes.

  • When emptying trash, doesn't empty

    This is my mom's macbook she's had about 3 years and when going to dowload off of e-mail it's saying there is not enough space. So we empty the trash and twice now when I've done so it's shown well over 4,000 pieces of trash of course meaning it's not actually dumping the trash at all. Has anyone had this problem or know what to do with it. Help would be very appreciated!

    Here's what I do: Double click on the trash can & a window opens up showing all past trashed files. The top rt corner has an "empty" button. Click on it & u will be asked to confirm that u want to permanently delete the files i Trash. Click OK & the files will disappear.

  • Emptying Trash in Dock empties trash on all volumes?

    If I have items in the trash from a number of external drives in additon to my internal HD, are they all deleted when I empty the Dock Trash?
    Is there a way to empty the trash ONLY for a given external drive?

    bobgoldstein wrote:
    A related question:  Is there a way to see what is in the trash for a given external drive?  It seems that the only list of files in trash is the one you get when clicking on trash in the Dock.  And that list seems to include only files that were moved to trash from the internal HD.
    Yes, In Terminal, use ls, so:
          ls /Volumes/"name of ext HD"/.Trash
    substituting using the ext HD's actual name and retaining the quotes.
    (You can use Tab Completion to help, so /Vol[tab] will expand to /Volumes/, then enter and you'll see all your Volumes.  Continue with ls /Volumes/"name[tab]then .Tr[tab])

  • Empty trash vs Secrue empty trash?

    Hi all,
    I have been using Macs for years, but never knew which was better to use. Most of the time I try and use secure delete but on large files and or on folders containing a larges number of files it runs slow.
    Do any of you know what the difference is and if one is better that the other?
    Thanks
    Greg©

    More info at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh475.html
     Cheers, Tom

  • Is it possible to create a secure empty trash shortcut in file menu?

    I have second finger click enabled so that I can quickly move files to the trash bin from the contextual menu. This is fine and dandy, however, for files containing sensitive informaton, I'd like to have a "Secure File Delete" option available (file bypasses the trash bin and is wiped after selecting said option).
    I've searched the threads and checked system prefs. Only options are to change "empty trash" to "secure empty trash". This wouldn't work as I have more files that are typically trashed and not wiped. It'd be nice to have it available as a convenience I suppose
    I know theres an app in the app store that offers this functionality. It's $3-4.
    So my question...is it possible to create such a contextual menu option on my own?
    heres an example of what I'm ltalking about...

    Create a new Service in Automator.
    Set it to receive files an folders in the Finder.
    Drag in an Ask for Confirmation action if you want it.
    Drag in a Run Shell Script action from the Utilities section of the Library.
    Set it to Pass Input as Arguments and Replace the code with:
    srm -r "$@"
    --That's ess-ar-em for Secure ReMove (just copy and paste)
    Save it and it will show up in the Services menu when you right-click on an item in the Finder.
    There are options you can add to it like -s for simple, -m for medium. The default (without options) is 35-pass Gutman.
    You can see what options are available by opening Terminal and typeing
    man srm
    Hit space to scroll down. Q to quit the man page.
    The Verbose and Interactive options won't work since you can respond.
    Note that depending on the algorithm chosen, it may take some time for the file/folder to disappear from the Finder view.

  • Want to run an archive and install, but can't empty trash to free space

    I don't know where to begin... at some point recently something caused problems with several applications, so after trying to repair permissions and repair disk with no luck, I decided to archive & install. Now I want the old problems back: Word/Excel/Photoshop will not open because of some library error (Carbonlib?), and my network settings keep going screwy such that if my computer goes to sleep, I couldn't pick up my wireless signal anymore without restarting (and then ta-da, there it was like there was never any problem).
    So in trying to archive and install I keep stalling at the very beginning... I'll leave it for hours hoping it would proceed but it wouldn't. I've repaired disk several times, with the same errors ultimately coming up. So without being able to archive and install I figured I'd better back everything up and do an erase & install. Started backing things up in prep for moving them onto a server, but when I plugged the server in, my computer said it couldn't get on. Same exact server wire had just come out of my work computer which connects just fine. So now I've got duplicates of all my files on the desktop, so I try to trash them and when I select 'empty trash' or 'secure empty trash', I get the box that says "preparing to empty trash" and then everything except my wallpaper goes away, and eventually comes back as if I've restarted. Now I definitely can't archive and install because with duplicate copies of all my files I have only 1.7gb available and need 1.9 to install just the required files.
    I'm at a total loss! Incidentally, my ipod won't mount if I try to plug it in.
    Are there other options in disk utility that I can try? I don't know enough to feel comfortable just trying something, and I don't know what the "Restore" option does.
    Oh goodness, I hope somebody knows something that can help me out of this.

    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3366422
    Odd, the link works for me.
    -mj
    [email protected]

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