Secure Empty Trash - takes forever with SSD

I've installed 2 x 256 GB Samsung SSDs that I am now thinking of using as my bootdrive. But as I was playing around with them, I noticed that they turn into the slowest turtles when secure emptying the trash. Having done some investigating, one issue appears to be OS X's habit of zeroing the respective areas 7 times to meet the DoD standards. (I believe that is not the only issue though as secure emptying also takes much longer in my RAID 0 HD setup than it should for just writing that amount of data 7 times).
I couldn't find any clues on how to change this behaviour of overwriting 7 times. As a recent study suggests that most data is gone for good after a single overwrite on both, HDs and SSDs, I reckon that is good enough for me. Any ideas on how to change that behaviour? (I am aware of the regular emptying trash, what I want is a 'secure empty' with a single overwrite).

Thank you - that's very helpful.
I guess this response also implies there is no way to change the default behaviour of the GUI?

Similar Messages

Why does SECURE EMPTY TRASH take so long (several days)?

I am using OS 10.3.9. I didn't empty the trash for quite a while, and several days ago clicked SECURE EMPTY TRASH. The emptying process began but has not finished even now! Does it take THAT much longer when one uses SECURE EMPTY TRASH? I see that the little message window for Trash says:
Item to delete: 114,158 This number hasn't gone down now for several minutes.
Several times I have stopped the Empty Trash process to shut the computer down or just because I wanted to stop it, but it seem to me that after "Emptying the Trash" has been going on for so long, it ought to be finished by now. I welcome any sunlight you can shed on this. Thank you.
— Lorna in Southern California

When you choose to Secure Empty Trash, the system
must overwrite the area where those items area a
minimum of 7 times for it to be considered secure.
When you have that many files in the Trash, this can
take quite some time.
So, unless you have something that is confidential in
the Trash, your best option is to Empty Trash
normally.
Mulder
If my answer helped solve your problem, please
consider awarding some points. Why
Reward Points?
OK, and thank you. You have answered my question; I now won't be worrying that something is awfy. The Secure Empty Trash is still emptying and it is down to about 77,000 items. I have clicked the YES, MY QUESTION HAS BEEN ANSWERED button and I appreciate your reassurance.
— Lorna in Southern California

'Secure Empty Trash' quits unexpectedly with external harddrive

I am running mavericks on a MacBook Pro, and removing old back-ups from an external harddrive, in order to make room for newer, time-machine backups.
After deleting an old back up, I am choosing to 'Secure Empty Trash', to clear out that space.
It started out with 650K plus items to delete and after a few days now, I'm down to 180K items.
But the system keeps quitting, and won't allow it to finish these final items.
I do get the question, "some items are locked, do you want to delete them" and I've tried choosing both yes, and no, and each time the process never gets started, just quits.
I'd like to get this drive cleared for more space.
Any suggestions on how to make it continue?
Thank you,

This was very helpful, thank you. With holding down the option key, I was able to get very far.
Now it's stuck again at 59K items left to delete. Holding down the option key is not making a difference.
The directions for working under the terminal system aren't very clear to understand.
Any other suggestions?
thank you so much.

Emptying trash takes forever

When I empty the trash in Lion it takes forever. There are 15000 -20000 files in the trash. They look to be coming from the Time Machine backups. Everytime I clean them out they come back. Any ideas?
Rex

I am right clicking on the trash icon and selecting "Empty Trash". I think I was able to find the issue. I deleted my backups on my airport and recreated them. Once I did that it resolved the issue.

Does secure empty trash save disk space?

Secure empty trash takes so much longer than just emptying the trash. Is secure empty trash just used to prevent files from being recovered, or does it actually save disk space on the iMac?

I am aware that everyone said that it doesn't save any disk space, because I read through the thread.
HOWEVER.
I had gotten down to 500 mb of disk space and was going crazy trying to delete photos and movies.
Finally I read about the secure delete, tried it. It took 24 hours, and then i hat 36 free gigabites.
THIRTY SIX GIGS OF MEMORY THAT I DIDNT HAVE BEFORE.
Only thing is I have no idea why, because everyone else says that it doesnt clear space.

Why is the "Empty Trash" option missing? All I have is "Secure Empty Trash" which takes a considerable amount of time.

Why is the “Empty Trash” option missing? All I have is “Secure Empty Trash” which takes a considerable amount of time.

check your finder preferences.

Secure Empty Trash Progress Bar Stalls With 4 Items Left

Greetings All,
I've recently installed OS X 10.5.1 and have had pretty good luck. I just tried to use the Secure Empty Trash function and the progress bar seems to be stalled with 4 items left. The trash can did "empty" with the associated sound effect when the bar hit 4 items, but that's as far as the bar will go. I've forced quit and have restarted the computer, added more trash, and run Secure Empty Trash again, but it always seems to stall out with 4 items left
Is there a way to make it go all the way to 0 items?
Where can I look to confirm if any trash is actually left (the trash can is empty)?
How can I be sure all my trash was securely destroyed?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

Thank you very much for this input... it is helpful. I downloaded the program and I can see how it will be extremely handy. I didn't realize that there were enough problems with the finder emptying trash to result in programs written to help with it. It must be a large enough problem in the big picture, though.
I looked through the developer's site and didn't see an indication regarding the type of emptying this program does (i.e. secure or normal). I am assuming it's a normal emptying of the trash.
Thank you again.

Why Does Leopard Take an Eternity to Secure Empty Trash

Hi Gang
With regard to Leopard 10.5, in a Single 1.8 G5, I researched this a bit, and forgive me but, it's hard to believe I'd have to resort to 3rd party 'Super Trashers', just to get the job done.
After comparing the time it took 5 small files to empty in Leopard as compared to 1,500 Video Files in Tiger, it was astounding!
Sooo... here's what I've done (so far); with respect to the System Drive and 2nd internal storage drive 'Sharing & Permissions', I clicked on 'Get Info' and made sure that everything is now set to 'READ & WRITE'
I don't know if this will make any difference - we'll see ...
Any other ideas?
Thanx
Mike

Thanx guys
Whatever the reason, I've convinced, (at least in my particular case), there is a DEFINITE difference between my two systems. Secure Empty Trash in Leopard is problematic.
Since I don't have anything important in this particular system, I'm willing to do a fresh install of Leopard. But as I said, there was already a fresh install performed in this 160 Gig 2004 system drive.
I'll stick with Tiger in my other system. This is where I have all the applications I need for the documentary. I treat this system with loving care. The other G5, (with Leopard), is used for other supplemental back up tasks. But again, performing Disk Permissions is 3 times as long, and Secure Empty Trash NEVER completes itself. (I realize one has nothing to do with the other)
I've heard of other 3rd party applications getting the job done, (info on the forum). Anyone know which one works best?
http://www.nonamescriptware.com/?page_id=5
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html
Thanx
Mike
http://www.ww2survivorstories.com/

Problem with secure empty trash

I'm having trouble to secure empty trash. So basically I have a hard drive plugged in and because the space is getting really little I wanted to empty the trash so that I would have more space in the hard drive. But everytime I'm in the middle of the process it is never done because "The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.". I tried to go to the disk utility to change the permission but the option is unavailable. Can someone please help me out? There's only 16GB left in my hard drive and I really need more space since it's storing too much trash right now. Thanks!
p.s. my hard drive is 320 GB spectra flash.

Please see my other post of the same nature.
Thanks to Hypen, WMP is GONE GONE GONE

Does Secure Empty Trash Accomplish the same task as Running disk util to wipe free space

Does using the secure empty trash option accomplish the same task as running disk util to eliminate free space from old deleted files? I'm currently running the 7 pass deal on my late '12 iMac. Says its gonna take 7 hrs. Can I use safari or iTunes while the Big Mac works its magic?

Does using the secure empty trash option accomplish the same task as
running disk util to eliminate free space from old deleted files?
No.
Finder > Empty Trash just tells the file system that those areas on the drive are now available for overwriting with new data. Data deleted off hard drives can be recovered if this method is used before it's overwritten with new data with special software.
Finder > Secure Empty Trash runs a 7x pass military approved overwrite only on the deleted files in the Trash, works for hard drives only.
Disk Utility > Erase Free Space creates a huge file that takes the remaining free space on the volume selected and either writes zeros or 7x pass, then confirms it and then removes the file. Takes a long time to complete, do not interrupt.
This can be used if one forgets to use Secure Empty Trash or wants to scrub caches or other files that don't necessarily go to the Trash for user deletion, such as program files that self delete and download cache files etc.
Only works for hard drives and there is no recovery possible for nearly all users. Those with special expensive magnetic equipment can possibly recover data off a zero pass, but not off a 7x overwrite.
The zero erase free space can be also be used to pre-eliminate potential unknown bad sectors on hard drives before wanted data is written to them, thus preventing future issues with data retention on hard drives.
Disk Utility > Erase - (not moving the slider) will erase all data on the volume or partition selected, including wanted data. It just tells the file system the deleted data is ready for overwriting. Thus can be recovered using special software before it's overwritten on hard drives only.
Disk Utility > Erase w/Security Option - (or moving the slider from the left) will secure erase all data on the volume or partition selected, including wanted data.
It can vary on the operating system version used from zero pass, to 3x overwrite, to 7x overwrite to 35x overwrite (old version for days past of smaller drives, don't use on newer larger drives as it will take weeks to finish.)
Secure erase methods are used to secure erase private data off of hard drives only, doesn't work for SSDs.
For secure data deletion off a SSD or any flash media, it's NSA advised to grind it into a fine powder.
How do I securely delete data from the machine?

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.

What exactly does "Secure Empty Trash" do?

There's very little technical detail on the web about this. I'd like to understand exactly what secure empty trash does.
What method does it use to overwrite?
How does it deal with temp files?
Why does it take so long?
Why, when there's only one file in the trash, does it always claim it's erasing 9 files?
What other files is it erasing in addition to the visible trash contents?
Can it work across network connections and external drives?
Has the method changed in Leopard?
etc.. etc..
Feel free to get all technical, if you know the answers!
Thanks!

What method does it use to overwrite?
It writes over the files with 0's.
How does it deal with temp files?
Not sure what you mean. It treats any file in the trash the same. Could you elaborate?
Why does it take so long?
Because it has to first write over the item with 0's, then delete the item.
Why, when there's only one file in the trash, does it always claim it's erasing 9 files?
What other files is it erasing in addition to the visible trash contents?
It's a bug.
Can it work across network connections and external drives?
Yes.
Has the method changed in Leopard?
Not that I know of.

Emptying trash takes long

I mean forever. I once wanted to remove one backup from the Time Machine drive, but when it counted about 800 000 files to be removed and started counting them down very slowly (I have a fast drive), I force killed the Locum process responsible for trash emptying and removed the files from the terminal (rm -rf). Of course it took much less time. Then I wanted to empty the rest of the trash, but this takes very long ever since. It always has say 10 files to remove and keeps removing them one after one for about a minute (insanely slow). Today I wanted to erase about 400 files (about 8GB) from my class 6 SD card and it took about two hours till I lost my patience, stopped the emptying (clicking the stop button now) and formatted the card in my camera. I wonder if it is the rm-rf procedure Mac Leopard doesn't like or what? If you look at my specs you will notice a good CPU and a fast disk too, that's just insane, It has never happened before till I did rm -rf the first time. And of course the Locum process takes a LOT of CPU performance while erasing the files. please give a suggestion what to do. thanks

1) it didn't take forever with rm -rf which is good to know in some cases
2) now everything takes forever. Okay not forever but for example I just removed a small app and trash emptying took loooong again, about a minute instead of a split of second, it has never happened to me before on a slower mac, I guess something is wrong. the Locum process - whatever it means - ate up about 130% of CPU (a whole core + 30% of the other one). I will try to reboot and inform.
edit: ah i looked the word up, no i'm not talking about a locum tenens, it is the actual name of the process which cares for file moving and trash emptying. FYI /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Resources/Locum
ohhhh you should see it counting down one after one, I tried to remove VLC player (mine 128MB), it the trash emptying window shows over 1200 files to be removed and counting down slowly at about 3files/second rate. weird. rebooting now.
Message was edited by: cukerko

How do i restore my secure emptied trash

heey
I was securely emptying my trash folder and i went to look into my iPhoto folder but nothing was there anymore, all my pictures and videos had been deleted. They must have got swipped when i was emptying it but is there any possible way of restoring these files as they were my only copies. Please help
Thankyou

Jasi1311 wrote:
I was securely emptying my trash folder and i went to look into my iPhoto folder but nothing was there anymore, all my pictures and videos had been deleted. They must have got swipped when i was emptying it.
First off, did you actually drag the iPhoto Library to the Trash perhaps with a bunch of other items?
Did you delete pictures/video out of iPhoto itself?
Look inside your Pictures folder and see if the iPhoto Library is there, if it is, then your pictures/video are likely safe, it's perhaps iPhoto needs to be reset.
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2638
You can also right click on the iPhoto Library and "show package contents" and inside is a folder called Originals containing your original files.
When you Secure Empty Trash, especially with a large amount of pictures and/or video, it will take some time as it's scrubbing the files off the hard drive. Depending how far this process occured depends how many files were pernamently removed from the hard drive.
Because OS X was told "these files don't exist anymore" doesn't mean they are not still on the hard drive, as only their space is made available for new files.
Since you canceled the secure erase, many files could still exist on the drive, just that the remaining ones not scrubbed are soon to be overwritten with new files.
So it's important not to use the computer's boot drive until you can perform data recovery steps.
You can need to install OS X on a external hard drive, then boot from it, install Data Rescue $100 and then have it read the 1's and 0's of the deleted data that remains.
Create a data recovery/undelete external boot drive
You also can take the computer to a local PC/Mac repair shop and ask them to perform Data Rescue, however it's going to cost a pretty penny as they have to sell a hard drive to you and thier time and effort. $200-$300 or so.
If your pictures and video are not worth spending up to $400 for recovery, then your done.
Always have a backup plan in place to "undelete" or boot the computer if it's not operating.
Most commonly used backup methods

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.

Secure Empty Trash - takes forever with SSD

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