Enabled FileVault - 24hrs later it's still "Deleting old Home folder"

So last night I enabled FileVault and told it to securely erase the home folder. Now, I know it was big. I had probably around 90GB in my home folder. Had about that much available on the drive, too. It has been sitting on 'Deleting old Home Folder' since I got up this morning. I started the process about 24 hours ago. Could it really be taking this long, or has it hung? I have backups of everything, so it's not a big deal if I have to cancel it and rebuild my home folder. I just want to know how long I should wait before I throw in the towel.

If you have a 90 GB home folder, it'll take forever. (And also be INCREDIBLY unreliable-do you really need every single file encrypted with U.S. Department of Defense level security?)
I recommend you make individual encrypted disk images for the private files.
Good luck!

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FileVault: How long does "Deleting old Home folder" take?

Hello, guys. I'm comparing FileVault and PGP WDE. I enabled FileVault on my MBP about 16 hours ago with about 30GB in my user folder, and it's been ""Deleting old Home folder" for at least 10 hours now.
I've not been able to find any accounts of how long this is supposed to take. Has anyone actually waited 16+ hours and had the thing complete?
I understand the pros and cons of using FileVault, but am wondering if the thing is supposed to work.

I didn't have enough free space the first attempt, and FileVault warned me. I freed up some space and moved some of my personal files to an external drive, and it allowed me to continue, the second time around.
This is my first FileVault attempt -- I'm really paranoid, and have two backups, just in case it fails!
I just did a hard reset, and my machine booted up properly. Now, I'll see if it is working OK...

I'm administrator of Macbook Pro. Can't get a home folder? Previous owner is off User list but still had a home folder on side bar. How do I get rid of hers and get a home folder of my own? Thanks for any help.

Hi: Bought a MacBook Pro age circa 2011,works great, except I understand I need to have a Home Folder. I am listed as administrator in the User accounts pref, in fact I'm the only user there. Still in the sidebar when starting up the Mac, there is the former owners Home Folder and not one for me. I want to delete her Home Folder and get one in the sidebar for me. I've tried all the things I could think of the delete her folder, but can't seem to do it as there isn't a button or prompt that I can click on to delete her folder and create one for me as the adminstrator. I'd really appreciate any help with this problem that someone might give me. Carol

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
If I have understood you properly, to do that, you have to create a new administrator user with your name and for your uses. Follow these steps:
1. Open System Preferences > Users & Groups, and press the + button to create a new administrator account.
2. When you have finished creating that user, open  > Log Out, and log in your new user.
3. Open System Preferences > Users & Groups, select the old user and press the - button to remove the user. If you want, you can select the option to remove the Home folder of this user, so you will only have the Home folder for your account

Apple script to delete user home folder

I wish to run a appple script to delete all user home folders except for ladmin which is an admin account. All other user home folders need to go. Any one have a script that can do this by using ARD

Account information is kept in NetInfo, a complex system database. If you just delete a home folder the account will still exist, and a new home folder will be created the next time a user logs into it.

How to delete the home folder of a deleted account?

After I set up a new account, I transferred everything from my old macbook pro to my new iMac (so it has a moutain lion system. I'm sure you know it. Just want to make it clear ) through migration assistance from time machine. Then I realized that an extra account (my old one) plus many unnecessary data had been transferred to my new iMac. Therefore, I decided to delete this old account.
HOWEVER, when I deleted the account, I failed to delete the home folder--I chose to delete it securely; but after it started backing up, I simply cancel the backup (which is a HUGE mistake) Then I found the account was deleted but its home folder stayed-- it occupied over 150GB of my new iMac.
Could anyone tell me how I can delete the home folder securely?
in addition, since I only want to transfer iphoto pictures, iTune music and some important documents to my new account, should I simply copy thme to an external drive and transfer them to my new account?
Thanks a lot for your help!

In system preferences, create a new account again, using the short name of the "deleted" account. You may be prompted to re-use the old home folder. Log out and log in to test it worked. Then log in as your new admin, and do the delete process again. Don't choose to securely delete this time - just a regular delete.
When you have time to spare, go to Disk Utility, and use the Erase tab to securely erase free space on the drive. This will accomplish the same thing that your originally tried to do. Use the fastest method - anything more secure is a waste of time. You may need to run it overnight - it can take several hours.
Matt

User Account deleted, but Home folder still visible

Deleted a user account within the System Preferences > Accounts and restarted the computer, but the "deleted" account is still visible under Finder > Users.
It failed to delete the account when I tried to 1st option of saving to .DMG - so I chose the 3rd option i.e.: to remove the Home folder. this seemed to work OK as the User Account is no longer presented as available to Login.
Don't understand why?
Thanks

Apple offers the option saving the user file as a disk image or delete the account, but keep the files in the account, or get rid of it entirely. The first two options make it possible to recreate the user account. You must move the file out of the User directory to rename (remove (deleted)) from the name. Place the folder back into the User directory and create another login using the same name as the file and the system will ask you if you want to use the above mentioned folder as the home folder. Click yes and the user is back as if it never left.
Why would I want to bother? You might find that there was something left in the user folder that you want to retrieve. Another reason, I consider even more significant is if I am having problems with a user account and it is isolated to that account, I will use this method to hopefully clear up any corruption within the account.

I need to recover my old home folder that was protected via FileVault

Hello,
One day last year, my PowerBook G4 up and died on me... that it would boot up nicely but it would not get to the log in screen. I pretty much assumed that the PowerBook G4 was DOA and I bought a 15" MacBook Pro a week later. Now, I had a lot of important files in my home folder (i.e. scan of a Canadian visa, a large music library, etc) that I wish to restore.
I've purchased an enclosure last week and I put the hard disk that I extracted from the old mac into the new enclosure. I have been trying to recover the sparsebundle file which has my FileVault protected files because, even though the hard disk will mount and I can see my old Applications, Library and other folders, I can't find my home folder's sparsebundle. I was wondering, does anyone here know of any way that I can recover the old sparsebundle? Note that the hard disk has NOT been used since that happened and I have not changed the file structure on that hard disk (in other words, I have not been saving or deleting files or formatting the drive).
So, does anyone have any ideas? I know that PhotoRec doesn't exactly try to find sparsebundles (after all, sparsebundles don't have a header that they recognize, they only recognize these files) but it has been successful at pulling old Apple EULAs and old Apple TV ads from the hard disk (apparently, the former owner was a fellow Mac geek, who knew? ;-P ) as well as assets and icon sets from (mostly) old versions of Apple applications, a whole lot of plist and txt files that aren't my personal files... as House said, "a lot of apples, no candy bars". ;-P So I know files *can* be restored from this hard disk, I'm just looking for the candy bar in a sea of apples.
Specific details about the old computer:
12" PowerBook G4, 1GHz
160 GB hard disk
had the latest version of Mac OS X 10.5
the computer was updated regularly
All of my applications, the library and System folder seems to be intact.
No changes have been made to the hard disk since the loss, other than placing the hard disk in an enclosure.
Format: Mac OS Extended (journaled)

Hi,
Your recurring payment didn't go through since Skype was not able to withdraw money from your PayPal account. It might be that credit card linked to your PayPal account expired.
I'm sorry to say that if subscription is not offered anymore then Skype can't attach it to your account anymore. You can use subscription until it's recurring, but if subscription is not offered anymore you can't sign up to it again.
Andre
If answer was helpful please mark it with Kudos and if issue is resolved mark it with solution. This will help other users find this answer more easily. Thanks in advance!

Deleting old library folder?

Hi there!
I recently updated to Lion, and I found out that some people couldn't see their library folder after upgrading, but I could see mine.
I tried that method with option-clicking on the 'Go'-tab, and I got into a new library folder. The content in the two folders aren't completely the same, but some things are. So my question is:
Can I delete the olde library folder from Snow Leopard?
Nikolaj

There's one for the System and one for the user.
See: Making sense of OS X's folder structure
I guess this is why Apple has hidden the Library Folder

Deleted Movies Home Folder with Transmit

Hi, accidentally I deleted my movies home folder with Trasnmit (pointing to the wrong window and bang!!!, bye bye movies!!!), and I managed to recover my files with Data Rescue II, but my problem is to get my Movies folder re-rooted to my user, which I have no Idea at all how to do.
Any help will be really appreciated.

And what about to have it rooted and protected with the ACL specials permissions that have Leopard, that is been talk in this posts:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6192505&#6192505
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6286626&#6286626

Can't delete old developer folder: dashcode.app and xcode.app running

I installed XCode 4.3.3 and accepted when it offered to delete the old version, XCode 4.2.1 I think.
The Developer folder was moved to trash but unfortunately I had the file compare tool runing at the time and that's perhaps why things have become messed up.
I shut down the file compare tool, but still when I tried to empty trash it reported that DashboardCleint.spp and xcode.app are running.
I can't find any way of stopping them, or even seeing them listed as running applications anywhere.
Any suggestions?
Cheers.

OK, yes this worked but I thought in a unix based system like MacOS there would be an way without a restart.
Need to start getting into unix again.
Cheers.

Changed disk for Time Machine -- delete old backup folder?

I got a bigger external drive for backups so I can use the smaller drive for data. I changed disk for TM in System Prefs, and all seems to be well; it's backing up to the new drive. Can I delete the previous TM backup folder on the smaller drive? Or does the new backup location need it for some kind of reference?
Thanks!

If you change TM destinations, it will restart from the beginning (or, resume if a previous backup was started on that volume in the past for the computer in question). In other words, you are safe to delete the old backup.

Delete old users

I'm giving my old MacBook to my little brother to use for school.
I've created a new user and given it admin status. I am trying to delete my old user account so that he can start fresh with a "new" computer and not have any of my pics, music, files etc on it.
I can't find my old disks to completely rewrite the system but I'm not worried about security....I just want to get all of my old files off so that they are not in his way.
The problem is: when I log out of my username and re-login as his new user name and click on System Preferences to delete my old user file nothing happens.
When I click on System Preferences in the new username under the apple icon nothing happens at all.
How can I delete my old user if I can't open system preferences in his new user account.
Plus, I'm sure that he is going to need/want to open system preferences as he uses his "new to him" computer.
thanks for any help or suggestions!!

yoyomern wrote:
I can't find my old disks to completely rewrite the system but I'm not worried about security
Your best bet is to call AppleCare. They can send a replacement set of the disks that came with it for a nominal fee. Your brother may well need them, sooner or later, to repair the internal HD, restore from a Time Machine backup, etc.
Then erase the HD and install the OS, and stop at the startup window, so he can set it up however he wants.
The problem is: when I log out of my username and re-login as his new user name and click on System Preferences to delete my old user file nothing happens.
When I click on System Preferences in the new username under the apple icon nothing happens at all.
That's only in the new account? It works fine in the other account(s)? If so, something is clearly wrong with the account. If you haven't done much with it, delete and re-create it. (Be sure to delete the home folder when prompted, too.)

Apple Script to delete old emails automatically

I couldn't figure out a way to automatically delete emails in one specific folder, based upon how old they were. I only wanted to keep them up to 15 days old. I have my security cam's motion alerts clips sent directly to a specific email folder. It is saved on mac server for safety. I searched all over and finally found http://applescripts.thompson-solutions.com/applescript.php?id=40
This apple script is awesome! It lets you pick how old you want to delete, and what folder.
This guy will get you any script you need, and they are great to deal with.

Account information is kept in NetInfo, a complex system database. If you just delete a home folder the account will still exist, and a new home folder will be created the next time a user logs into it.

Created new user acct. deleted old user acct. can't access old TM backups

After changing the name on my home folder and deleting and creating a user account I can't access the old backups when I enter time machine.
After creating the new user acct TM did a full complete backup that I can access
Is this normal behavior or a problem?
All of the above was done working with AppleCare
Thanks for helping a Mac newbie.
Mark

Triple-click the line below to select it, then copy the text to the Clipboard (command-C):
/Users
In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V), and press return. A folder will open with the home folders of all users as subfolders. Enter Time Machine. You should now be able to see your old home folder in the snapshots that were taken before you renamed it.

The home button has stopped working on my iphone 5c. Did the same a few months ago and recovered 24hrs later. Can anyone explain this problem. Phone still in warranty. Had steam issue recently but this was after last home button episode.

Have an iphone 5c 8g. The home button has stopped working. Did the same a few months ago and recovered 24hrs later. Can anyone explain this problem. Phone still in warranty. Had steam issue recently but this was after last home button episode and no evidence of damage.

If you are playing in hockey arenas a lot or if you are bringing it into bathroom same time as shower it may not seem like much but overtime the steam can acquire and build up in the phones usb dock flex cable swell as the home button flex cable. Bring again into apple store and should be covered under warranty again. could also be a delay in a 8gb 5c software may just be very lag.

Enabled FileVault - 24hrs later it's still "Deleting old Home folder"

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