Kernel panic after "Erase Free Space" No end in sight

I did an "Erase Free Space" in disc utility. After seeing it through to about 90% complete, I went to bed. When I got up in the morning my fan was whirring away and I couldn't wake up the computer, so, using the power button, I shut it down, then turned it back on. Now I can't get into OS X (I see the message "You need to restart your computer..."), I can't boot from CD, and I can't boot in safe mode. All I can do is run the hardware test (after booting while holding "option" key), which tells me everything is fine. My only theory is that my hard disc was locked during the erase free space operation and since I have been unable to properly reboot the system, it can't be unlocked in order to boot from CD or open OX X. Any thoughts? I've been without my mac for a week now and am growing increasingly desperate. Thanks.
iMac G5 (with iSight) Power PC 2.1 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

..."When I erased free space, instead of writing zeros to the free space, it essentiall wrote ones [...] I can start up in single-user mode and am contemplating formatting the drive and reinstalling OS X, if I can't just erase induvidual files."...
How exactly did you figure this out - what exactly are you seeing with respect to "individual files"? I thought the procedure with erasing free space used by OS X was basically to fill the free space with a big file, and securely deleting that file, but things may have changed. Your reference to writing ones and individual files is giving me an impression of many small files instead of a single large one - i.e. something that is different from what I would have expected.
I would have suggested looking for a file called EFTFile1.sparseimage or EFTfile2, or something like that while booted in single-user mode. It would have been in your user's "~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems" folder, or in "/private/var/root/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems" and been as large as the free space was before starting the procedure. It should have been deleted automatically if the process had succeeded but if the process was interrupted, it would have been left on the drive taking up all of the space. Normally, you should be able to 'rm' it manually after mounting the drive as writable (with the usual warnings about executing commands in single-user mode), but since the situation may be different in this case, I don't know if this suggestion applies...

Similar Messages

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.

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!

Unusual hard disk activity after "Erase free space"

I have two partitions on my hard disk - a small partition for the system software and a big partition for everything else. A few days ago, I backed up a few files from my big partition and then used Disk Utility "Erase free space". Since then, my hard disk is behaving oddly. I can hear it, as if it continuously reading and writting data. At first, I thought it was an auto-update in progress or some sort of automatic system maintenance. But the odd behavior never stopped. I scanned my files with an anti-virus software - nothing wrong. I scanned my files with Disk Utility - nothing wrong. I used Onyx to check the system - nothing wrong. I even erased and reinstalled the system software - no changes! So what could possibly force my hard disk to behave like that? Is something messed up because of "Erase free space"?

You could run fs_usage
To view file activity for all processes with the fs_usage tool, you would enter the following at the Terminal prompt.
sudo fs_usage
If you wanted to limit the display to files accessed by a particular process, you could redirect the output through the grep tool. For example, to display file behavior for the TextEdit application, you would enter the following at the Terminal prompt:
% sudo fs_usage | grep TextEdit
Once your application finishes launching, stop fs_usage by typing Control-C in your Terminal window.
Look for all writes. Might be mdworker (Spotlight)
Try reindexing Spotlight by dragging the HD icon into the Privacy window. Leave it there for a minute and remove it using the minus button.

Help please - message after using the Erase Free Space function in Disk Ut

Please help. I've been using my Mac Mini for 6 months and decided I wanted to securely erase previously deleted files, and found the Erase Free Space facility in Disk Utilities. So I chose the option "7-pass Erase of deleted files", and left my Mac Mini to do its business.
At the end, I got the message that my startup disk is full, but ignored that message because I understand that's normal when free space has been deleted.
After doing a Restart, things seem to be running smoothly, but I have a Warning message which reads
Warning. The following disk images failed to mount:
Image: EFTFile1.sparseimage Reason: corrupt image.
What does this mean, please, and what do I have to do, if anything?
I'm completely new to this, so please explain clearly.
Thanks everyone!!

Hi again, i've resolved the problem, thanks. It was my inexperience that was helping confuse the issue.
Sorry to have taken your time. Thanks again for your input.

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".

Erased free space in Disk Utility, and after it finished it kept a DMG there.

I erased free space in Disk Utility, and after it finished it kept a DMG there called "DeveloperDiskImage.dmg", why is it left behind? can it be deleted? how? if erasing free space is supposed to help get memory and remove all the files truly, it shouldnt be creating anything, it created a DMG at the start, but it went away, after a hour and a half it made the DeveloperDiskImage, i went to eat dinner and when i came back it was done but that was left.

Delete it. Erasing the free space isn't supposed to free up any space; it's there in case someone deleted a file insecurely when they meant to securely delete it.
(65417)

After using "erase free space," hard drive has almost no available capacity

I decided to clean all the files off my iMac as I wasn't using it as my primary computer anymore. After deleting the files, I used Disk Utility and used "erase free space" with the 7x option. I also emptied the Trash folder.
When I checked the HD, I found:
Capacity: 297.77 GB
Available: 4.68 GB
Used: 293.09 GB
This makes no sense to me, since there is very little on the computer (some applications). Also, before I started, I know there was about 260 GB available.
I'd appreciate some advice on how to "free up" the available space that I know must be there.
Thanks!

Hi, sounds like the secure erase didn't finish maybe & left a big invisible file on there.
How much free space is on the HD, where has all the space gone?
OmniDiskSweeper is likely the easiest/best, and is now free...
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper/download/

Lost free space after an "Erase Free Space" procedure

I just ran the "Erase Free Space" application from the Dick Utility. The erase failed and now I have ZERO free space available. I am now showing that all 111g or used oposed to roughly 50% prior to the Erase Free Space. I have found a few articles trying to explain what to do but, I have been unable to locate the empty temp files that we created during the Erase Free Space, so I have been told. Can anyone help me resolve this solution and restore my free space?
Thank you,
Shannon

WhatSize should be able to find the temporary files
<http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/>
You could try the Erase Free Space from Disk Utility on the install DVD. It might delete the files when it finishes.

HT3680 How to get my free space back after quitting the disk utility's erase free space

Hi,
I started the DU's erase free space--fastest way method. When it almost completed, I had a pop up that said that I need to free up disk space.
So then i was flustered enought to just quit the program because I didnt want to free up disk space and I was frustrated.
Not knowing it would still keep whatever it was that took the remaning disk space on my Mac.
How to I get this removed so I am back to before?

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!

'erase free space' not secure - it doesn't seem to work?

Just wanted to point out that the erase free space option in Mountain Lion does not seem to work, at all.
A week ago I ran erase free space on my primary data drive then later, out of curiosity, I ran an inexpensive third party recovery program on the disk just to see what happened. Interestingly enough the recovery software was able to find and restore files that I had deleted over a year ago.
This has me thinking, so today I tried it again, only with a 7 pass erase this time. Nope, same thing. After a 7 pass erase (erase free space) this low end, less than $35 recovery software turns up tons of files, everything from stuff I just deleted a few days ago to stuff from over a year ago.
If I'm doing something wrong I would love for someone to point it out to me. Not that I'm toting state secrets or anything on my mac, but still - my privacy is important to me and I assume it is to others.
I'd encourage folks to try this out for themselves.
My set up is a 2011 macbook pro with an SSD as the boot drive, I've got a second harddrive installed in the optical bay and this is where my home folder lives. The secondary drive is the drive where I'm running erase free space.
The only thing that I can think of is that, even though the button is not greyed out, maybe I need to be booted to recovery in order to succesfully run erase free space on system drives?
Any input would be greatly appreciated, otherwise this seems like a pretty ugly security lapse on the part of Apple. Imagine if you're selling your machine and secure erasing before turnign it over to its new owner - and the new owner can run a $35 dollar recovery program and access everything on your machine.
Not good.

Thanks for your response, William.
I think that the issue may have to do with being booted to the system while trying to erase free space. I ran a 7 pass erase free space on a 1TB external Lacie drive this afternoon, the operation took a bit over 6 hours to complete and recovery sofatware is turning up nothing.
This is in contrast to the main drive, which my original post referenced, which is a 500gb 7200 rpm internal drive. A 7 pass secure erase took less than 5 minutes to complete - so, even though the drive is 1/2 the size, there's obviously something not right with the 7 minutes time to complete.
Tomorrow I'm going to try either booting to another account (which doesn't utilize this partcular disk) or booting to recovery and seeing what happens.
I have a feeling that this will solve the problem - I'll post back tomorrow evening.

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

"Erase Free Space"- DU Not Responding?!

     Started "Erase Free Space" in disk utility about 36 hours ago. I had nearly 1TB of free space which I knew was more than the usual amount someone has when they perform this task but I was attempting to speed up game playing as after a year or so, excess of deleted saved games and game data has gradually slowed game performance down some. I read that this might help so I ran it...
     It took 24 hours to do the initial run through up until the "creating temporary secondary file" notification. It looked as though it was about to complete and I received the usual error message that apple says to ignore about no remaining free space or something to that effect. However, out of nowhere the spin wheel started, the Disk Utility window went grey and everything seemed to have frozen.
     After reading several peoples experiences with things like this I was confident that it would resolve in a few minutes, maybe half an hour even and then most likely resolve itself. It was late so I went to bed and when I got up it was still in the same place as I left it...greyed out and spin wheeled.
     So then I went to the Activity Monitor to check the Disk Usage as I knew that I could view the progress through that. As far as I'm aware, after creating the temporary file, as it already did, it is supposed to start looking like free space is "disappearing" as it puts the recently overwritten free space into its newly created temp file and then eventually deletes the file.
     Problem is, the Activity Monitor shows the Disk Utility as "Not Responding" along with Safari and Mail having the same message, yet at the same time I see the free space on my HD SLOWLY (20-100kb/s) doing that "dissapearing" act. So is the Disk Utility doing its job? Is it hung up some how? If it is working then why is it moving at such an incredibly slow rate? Should I be concerned or take some sort of action or just wait while this resolves itself in who knows how long from now?
Advice on this would be very much appreciated as I am not a very experienced Mac user.

apple customer 1 billion wrote:
There aren't that many files to lose in the long run. It's more a matter of avoiding the risk out of convinience for not losing the few that I have. So correct, I have no back up since there isn't much to back up, hence the nearly 1TB of overwritting free space in the first place. Unfortunately, I realized just how long this process takes after I began it, and now it seems to late...
If I did restart, what would likely happen?
Possibilities I've come across:
1.won't be able to log in because theres no more free space
2.I'd have to search for the temp file and manually delete it (provided I had some extra space to do it)
3.might lose all data and have to reinstall everything
Could be any or all 3
Is there a safe way to either:
1.Restart with little to no complications listed above
2.Safely end this task without some sort of unfixable complication occuring
3.Boost its processing so that I can resonably wait it out
There may not be, but I might as well check around before I go straight to Restart is what I was thinking.
No, no and no unfortunately, patience or a leap of faith are the choices

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.

Help! iMac performing in erase free space for over 14 hours!

How long should 7-pass 'erase free space' of 69.9 GB take?
I'm giving my old iMac G4 to a young relative. After completing 'erase and install' of OS 10.4, to be sure data would not be easily accessible, I read a few threads in the Installation and Setup forum and decided to do a 7-pass erase of free space.
The message in the Disk Utility window counted down from 8 hours and then switched to "secure erasing file". The blue progress bar doesn't appear to be progressing but is stuck about 1/2 cm from the end.
It's now been going for 14 hours. This seems an extra-ordinarily long time, 'though, for all I know, zero-ing out could take 2 hours. Thinking back, I clicked on 7-pass twice, once via 'security options' then via 'erase free space'. Was that a major mistake?
Is 14 hours too long? And, if so, is it too late to click on 'skip'?

Well, I pressed 'skip' and little changed except that it reported "skipping", whatever that means. So I took courage in both hands, as it were: one to press 'quit' and the other to press 'continue' and ignore the warning that quitting could cause irreparable damage to the HD.
As far I can see, no problem but I'm going to run Drive 10 before I erase-and-install OS X again just so that I can command-Q setup assistant and leave my young relative to set it up for herself.
Many thanks for your help, both Toms too. I guess this question can be logged a 'solved'.
Anne

Kernel panic after "Erase Free Space" No end in sight

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