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
Eric

MacintoshHD:~$ 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.

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How to find block free space and PCTUSED FOR THE TABLE

HI all,
Due to performance issues for my database , my management ask me to reset the PCTUSED and PCTFREE values , and my doubt is
1)How to find the current PCTUSED and PCTFREE values.
2)How to find block free space and PCTUSED FOR THE TABLE.
Please help me out regarding this.
Regards,
Vamsi.

1)version is 10.2.0.4
2)output of query
tablespace extent_management allocation_type segment_space_management
SYSTEM     LOCAL     SYSTEM     MANUAL
UNDOTBS1     LOCAL     SYSTEM     MANUAL
SYSAUX     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
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USERS     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
UNDOTBS2     LOCAL     SYSTEM     MANUAL
INS     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
CONFTBS     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
REINS     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
ANALYST     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
BI     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
INTRFC     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
COGNOS     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
TS_INDX     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
TS_CHOLAWEB     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO
TS_DASBOARD     LOCAL     SYSTEM     AUTO

HELP! I attempted to erase free space and now I can't open any files!

Hi everyone! I hope you can help me with my problem.
Last night, I attempted to erase free space from my HD using disk utility. During the operation, the computer hung, so it wasn't able to complete 'creating temporary file' operation. So i had to stop the operation. And now, I can't open any files! Turns out my HD was full. But prior to my attempt to erase free space, I still had 25GB out of 55GB of free space. What happened? And how do I fix it? A lot of important files are in my HD and I don't want to lose any of it.
Hope somebody could help me. Thanks a lot!
allworkedup
iBook G4 14" Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hi, Scary isn't it? I did the self same thing. Check your trash, you should see one or more disk images there. Empty the trash. All will be OK thereafter.
If they're not there, restart and either the system will sort itself out or they will appear in the trash, so empty it.
See here for my thread on the same subject.
Good luck,
Adrian
Message was edited by Adrian: Oh, and Welcome to Discussions !!

"Erase Free Space" work-around for non-apple ssd

for those of you attempting to "Erase Free Space" per knowledge base article:
"OS X Lion v10.7.3: User account passwords appear in log files for Legacy FileVault, and/or network home directories"
quote:
"6. Open Disk Utility.
7. Select your OS X Lion volume on the left.
8. Click "Erase Free Space…".
9. Select the Erase Free Space Option you want and click "Erase Free Space". Enter admin name and password if prompted."
but instead seeing a grayed out "Erase Free Space" in Disk Utility?
you can perform an "Erase Free Space" by using WipeFS app by Jonathan Clark which can successfully perform a DoD (Department of Defense) wipe for digital media, apple's Disk Utility doesn't do this anymore with non-apple solid state drives (ssd)
references:
https://support.apple.com/kb/TS4272
http://itunes.apple.com/hr/app/wipefs/id484887048?mt=12

...but instead seeing a grayed out "Erase Free Space" in Disk Utility?
See,
Mac OS X: About Disk Utility's erase free space feature
which says,
Note: With OS X Lion and an SSD drive, Secure Erase and Erasing Free Space are not available in Disk Utility. These options are not needed for an SSD drive because a standard erase makes it difficult to recover data from an SSD. For more security, consider turning on FileVault 2 encryption when you start using the SSD drive.
Also google "erasing space on ssd".
Bottom line, it is not something you want to do to a ssd.

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.

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

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!

How can I erase My hard drive. Disk utility only gives me the option of erase free space. I have 27in iMac with Lion and 12 gb ram.

How can I erase my hard drive? Disk utility only gives me the option to erase free space.
Thanks for any assistance.

Drive Preparation for Lion
1. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button. Select Disk Utility from the main menu and click on the Continue button.
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. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU to return to the main menu.
5. Select Reinstall Lion then click on the Continue button. You need an active network connection in order to download the Lion software.

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.

Disk Utility - Erase Free Space - Creating Temporary File Freezes

BDAqua: I tried responding to your reply to my original posting but I get an error message that I was not authorized to reply. I logged out. I can't find the original posting in my Activity so I approached from the link in my e-mail saying you had replied. Now it says the area is restricted. What's up with that?
Rod
Here's the original post:
I used "Erase Free Space" with Disk Utility after trashing several files I no longer wanted on the hard drive or recovered. I used "Zero Out Deleted Files" option. It took over 12 hours before an error message appeared "Your start up disk is almost full. You need to make more space available on your start up disk by deleting files." I thought that was what I was doing. Disk Utility continued but got stuck on "Creating Temporary File." I force quit Disk Utility after several more hours. I had to manually shut down the computer because the restart command wouldn't work. It rebooted and appears to be OK. Evidently, this temporary file consumes significant amounts of disk space. This is an older iMac with 10.4.11 (18 GHz PowerPC G5) - I know, pretty old but I still have OS 9 on it and several files I need to extract before I trash it.
1. Should I do nothing? The iMac seems to be working fine.
2. How do I know if this Temporary File exists and consuming space? Spotlight doesn't find it. Where is it?
3. Is my start up disk in fact almost full? How would I know that?

Here'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?

Undo erase free space?!?!?!

i screwed up my powerbook, i have a capacity off 74.4 gbs on my hard drive and i ran erase free space and now i only have 244.0 kb, how do i get my hard drive space back??? please help im having a nervous breakdown.

A similar problem came up in the unix section of this site a while ago. Apparently, "erasing" the free space in "Tiger" is performed by basically making a file representing the free space, overwriting that file, then deleting the file. The problem in that case was that the user's battery ran out before the "delete" step so they were stuck with the massive file left on the hard drive (in their case, they couldn't even boot).
To see if you are affected by a similar problem, try logging in to an "admin" account, opening "/Applications" > "Utilities" > "Terminal.app" and entering this command:<pre>sudo ls -lh /private/var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems"</pre>At the prompt, enter your "admin" password. The output should contain a listing of the contents of the directory where the temporary files were saved in the earlier case...

No Hard Disk Detected after Erasing Free Space

Hi ,
First I will explain the problem, I will be grateful for your help to solve it as immediately as possible. Thanks in advance !
I have a MacBook Black since 2007, with system specification, 160 GB Hard Disk, 1GB RAM, 2.16 GHz Intel Processor. I had a OS X 10.4.11 Tiger version. I need to upgrade it to 10.6 Snow Leopard. I bought OS X 10.6 DVD Snow Leopard version from Apple Store.
Last night, I save my all the data on external HDD, and tried to install 10.6, and it is installed over 10.4.11 with everything on the internal 160 Hard Disk. I did not want like that. I again started the installation process, I went to Disk Utility, I did some thing with partition, i.e. I created again 160 GB partition. Then I wanted to format, Then I saw some Erase Free Space and only Erase also, I click on Erase only, it is finished in seconds. but I was not satisfied. I saw button Erase Free Space then I click there, then , it takes about 90 minutes, and at the end, I saw a failure message that it could not create the temporary file or something like that I forgot what was written, however, it was a failure message ( it is failed to create etc ) .. ,
Then I saw, that there was nothing in the disk utility tool except the installing 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD. I was shocked, what happened.
Does some body could help me in this regard. How can I get the internal HDD with installation DVD ? What should I do after to erase everthing from my internal HDD, I mean , there should be nothing on it ..,
A big THANKS to you to solve this problem.
Best Regards,
Imran Khan
Macbook Black
1 GB RAM
160 GB HDD
2.16 GHz Intel

Yes, I just played with Disk Utility, and in the end, I found nothing.
With the installer DVD, when I came upto Menu List, I click on Apple in the upper left corner, There are many menus but in grey, I can't click on them, e.g.
About This MAc
Software Update...
Mac OS X Software ...
Logout ...
I can't click them ,
Just for Info, In the Utilities Menu, the list is as below,
Startup Disk ..
Reset Password..
Firmware Password Utility
Disk Utility
Terminal
System Profiler
Network Utility
Restore System From Backup,
Here I click on the System Profiler Menu, After that, I go into deep, there are hardware list,
In ATA ... it shows only MATSHITADVD-R UJ-857E .. in detail it shows about the installer 10.6 DVD
and
In Serial-ATA .. it shows Intel ICH7-M AHCI ..
I did not find anything about internal HDD of 160 GB.

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 issue

Here'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?

I used the "erase free space " option in disk utility and now my imac says the disk is full and wont let me download songs. please help!

i used the "erase free space " option in disk utility and now my imac says the disk is full and wont let me download songs. please help!

You could try repairing permissions with disk utility, I don't think you will have the option to repair the drive but you could verify it.
This may help you delete the files that DU made but did not remove when erasing the free space.
http://macosx.com/forums/mac-os-x-system-mac-software/317204-no-disk-space-after -failed-disk-utility-erase-free-space.html
When you get your SL disk it will not have the iLife applications, that would have been on the second install disk that should have been with the computer. I forget which version of iLife you will need for SL but I think it is this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apple-iLife-Single-User-Mac/dp/B003XKRZES/ref=sr_1_1?ie= UTF8&qid=1409607702&sr=8-1&keywords=apple+ilife+11
A search of the forums will confirm or deny this.
As to whether a clean install will cure your problem, i.e. partition the HDD and install I would expect it to be yes, but there are no guarantees it is an old machine.

Erase free space in Disk Utilities grayed out for SSD

Is it normal that this function (erase free space) does not work for a SSD? It is grayed out on my iMac for SSD not for the 1 TB HDD.
Now that I installed Lion and Trim is working (on original Apple SSD) in my iMac I would like to erase free space. I read somewhere that you should do this if you did not have the Trim option before and you do have it now. Or is this BS?
peterwillem

Take a look at this link, https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3210131?start=0&tstart=0

Erase free-space and permissions for applications

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