Secure Empty Trash & Trash Cache

Am old Mac addict home user with Apple from day one but not a guru. Still have Apple IIE that runs like a clock. With 17 Macs in between, years ago when G3 would slow down, get sluggish and tired, I discovered that setting trash cache and deleting many thousands of cached files would invigorate the machine and restore it's original speed using Preferences in TechTool Pro V 3.
Currently have TTP V4 in both G5 Pro Mac OS 10.5.6 and G5 Power Mac OS 10.4.11. Cleaning out old manuals got rid of TTP V2 and V3 manuals. Still have CDs but unfortunately no serial numbers. So, unable to open those programs. Micromat archives couldn't help. Also, unable to use TTP V4 preferences to set trash cache as there's no Preferences capability. Apparently it can be assumed there's no trash cache in current versions of TTP.
Queried Micromat about trash cache who said to "Go into "System Preferences" --> "TechTool Protection". In the "Volume Usage" tab, you can set how many days you want TechTool Pro to save the "Trash History"." No joy as I couldn't figure out what that meant about "System Preferences" or how to do what they recommended.
No problem as both G5s are operating fine. But, I'm curious.
I use "Secure Empty Trash" exclusively shutting down my G5s. My questions: Does that shut down feature remove all data from the HD thereby eliminating the need for a trash cache? If there's still a trash cache, is there any way to set it? Thank you and regards. Ol' Jim.

Did you get a response to this? There is no solution listed, but it’s marked Solved.
I think you are right that there is no longer a Trash Cache. I did a search and it came up with two files called Trash Cache, both were dated 2002, obviously many systems ago which probably came over with Migration Assistant from previous computers.
The TechTool Protection is new with TTP 5. You won’t see it in System Preferences with TTP 4. That’s probably why you couldn’t figure out what they meant.
Secure Empty Trash writes over those files which makes them nearly impossible to recover, so I don’t think you need to worry about them.

Similar Messages

I want to delete a folder but every time i do, it reappears on my desktop, even after I empty/secure empty the trash.

I want to delete a folder but every time i do, it reappears on my desktop, even after I empty/secure empty the trash.

I contracted Security Tool the same way about ten minutes ago on my Win7 Home Premium laptop. Firefox prompted me to do an immediate update the way it normally does, with a convincing update screen that looks like the typical Mozilla update prompt. However, the installer I downloaded was in fact "Security Tool." The program firewalls Firefox to prevent searches and also prevents access to Task Manager via Ctrl-Alt-Del. On the surface this appears to be a particularly nasty strain of malware / scamware, and FF users need to be warned and/or innoculated immediately.

Why does the computer lock up while I am securely emptying the trash?

Why does the computer lock up while I am securely emptying the trash?

Select  ▹ Force Quit... from the menu bar, then select Finder and press return. From the Finder menu bar, select Finder ▹ Preferences ▹ Advanced and uncheck the box labeled Empty Trash securely. Try again to empty the Trash. If you still have problems, follow the instructions in this support article:
You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash

Why does secure empty the trash take so long to perform?

When I empty the 'secure trash' folder, it takes hours to perform what use to take seconds or minutes to do.

Try deleting less at one time.
Unless you're trying to get rid of malware/dodgy software, there's not really much point in using 'secure empty trash' if what you're worried about is someone recovering your deleted files. Experts can still recover stuff even after that.
The only way to get rid of your data securely is to overwrite the entire disk several times with zeros (Disk Utility has a function for this, and it will take a long time.).
And if its really confidential, put the disk in an incinerator or a blender , the only 100% surefire method.

Securely emptying trash after having emptied trash (unsecurely)

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

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

How do I make trash not do a "Secure Empty Trash"?

Here is what's happening to my Trash whenever I move a file to it for deletion. Ever since I changed the Trash settings to "Secure Empty Trash", and I securely empty the trash when it only have 1 or 2 files in it, it comes up saying there's like 20. when there isn't...so help?
OR Could someone tell me how to chnage the Trash settings so it is just "Empty Trash".
Thankayou.

Uncheck "empty Trash securely" in Finder > Preferences > Advanced tab.
Regards,
Captfred

Secure Empty Trash seems to repeat itself

If I use "Secure Empty Trash..." I may (for example) see that 8 files are being deleted and the Trash is now empty. If I then delete 1 file and repeat the aforementioned process I see that once again 8 files are being deleted. Why would this happen? Thanks.

Hi,
That doesn't explain some of my own findings - the numbers don't add up. In my system, if only the startup disk is mounted and a single file is placed in the Trash, a secure-delete progress window will show four items being deleted.
Just mounting an additional external volume will add two items to the apparent number of items being secure-deleted for each such volume added, even though no files on the additional volumes are placed in the Trash to begin with.
Here are the tests I did.
Start with a text file that is on the DeskTop.
For each test:
1) duplicate the text file
2) move the duplicate copy to the Trash
3) secure-empty the Trash,
4) repeat step 1
5) repeat step 2
6) repeat step 3
Steps 1-3 were done to be sure the Trash folders were truly empty before performing the actual test in steps 4-6.
To be determined:
In step 6, after that single file has been placed in the startup volume's Trash, how many items does the secure-delete progress window show as being deleted?
Results:
In my system, if the test is run with no disk volumes other than the startup disk mounted, the secure-delete progress window shows four items being deleted.
If I run the test after first mounting a single external volume, then the secure-delete progress window shows six items being deleted. Again, just one file was in the Trash after step 5, the same as for the first test.
If I mount a second external volume and repeat the test, again with only a single file in the Trash after step 5, the secure-delete progress window now shows 8 items being deleted.
If I first mount all 15 of my external partitions and run the same test, again with a single file in the Trash after step 5, the secure-delete progress window shows 34 items being deleted!

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

Do I need to secure-empty trash to prevent fragmentation?

I now have SSD based hard disks. I keep reading a lot of mixed commentary online in forums about the secure-emptying of SSD disks...some people advise *against* it.
I don't care about privacy of data. These are all things just at my home.
My real worry is about fragmentation. Even with my Mac Book Pro, regardless of what they say, as the hard disk fills up, the machine gets slower. So I want to be ultra-cautious about how I keep my system.
Is there any value or need to secure-empty my trash as it was recommended in the olden days to prevent frag?
(And please don't tell me the hackneyed thing about "Macs dont need defrag".)
Thanks!

http://helpdeskgeek.com/featured-posts/should-you-defrag-an-ssd/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2047513/fragging-wonderful-the-truth-about-defrag ging-your-ssd.html
And yes, here is the accurate, not hackneyed, answer (related to mechanical drives): unless you have very large files, there is no benefit to defragging a Mac.
Secure Empty writes 7 passes of random zeros and ones. So doing that to an SSD will not only not be helpful, but it will increase the wear.

Can not do secure empty trash because of error

I want to securely empty my trash but I keep getting this error:
You can't copy the item ".DS_Store" because its name is too long or includes characters that are invalid on the destination volume.
Help please?

I have the same problem with the error :
"You can't copy the item "" because its name is too long or includes characters that are invalid on the destination volume." when try to empty my trash in secure way.
Here is the solution step by step:
01. Go to the Link :
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8214/trash-it!
02. Download the "trash-it"
03. Unzip it, Enter into the folder, go to "Drag content to Desktop" folder and double click to the "Trash It!.app"
04. Press "Really Stuck"
05. See your Trash, the undeletable folder/files is gone from your trash

Secure empty trash permissions

when I try to securely empty the trash it tells me some items are locked and asks to continue with all? If I indicate yes, it stops and says I don't have permissions for all files. the files that remain are mainly old apps and .mp3 from iTunes. How do I fix these permissions to get them deleted?

Linc Davis, the option key worked for everything but one folder. It was a folder I deleted from my camera SD card. Oddly enough the folder is empty. So I appreciate your help, but do you have any clue why this folder is persistent?

Cannot securely empty trash

I have recently installed Lion.
I've tried to securely empty the trash; but did not work. However, when I've tried to just empty the trash, it worked!
What is going on?
How can I empty the trash securely?
Thanks

See permissions to modify a file here > You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash

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?

Secure Empty Trash vs Empty Trash, Hangs and Advanced Finder Pref.

I've had my intel-based iMac for a couple of weeks and I've been getting a frequent hanging trash problem that causes me to restart my Mac far too often. Restarting the iMac fixes it but I don't know what the problem is to begin with. It seems to happen when I have over 10MB in the trash and I choose "Secure Empty Trash."
While I'm on the topic of "Secure Empty Trash," won't "Empty Trash" do the same thing SECURELY since I've previously checked it off in my Finder Preferences? Is the "double selection" of secure empty trash part of the problem (i.e. selecting it when I go to empty the trash as well as having it selected in my finder preferences)? Any and all help is appreciated.

Yes it's the same if you choose Secure Empty Trash from the Finder or if you have it selected in the Finder advanced preferences. The thing is electing to Secure Empty the trash may take a lot longer to empty because it does either a 7 pass or 35 pass write over the files and that can take a long time to do for large files.
As a test it took me just over 3 minutes to Secure Empty a 175MB file.
Something you should do though seeing as you've had to forcefully shut down your iMac a few times is Run Disk Utilities. Open up Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility select your hard drive on the left and under the First Aid tab click on Repair Disk Permissions then Verify Disk.
George

Trash - why are items multiplied with Secure Empty

Every time I securely empty the Trash of one item placed in it, I get a message that says Emptying the Trash Items to delete 4. If I'm securely emptying more than one items, the message is similarly a multiple of the number of items I put in the Trash. Is this Normal or Abnormal? Either way, why am I seeing this message?

this is completely normal. that number is not a multiple of files you are deleting. rather it counts number of drives you have and adds two files per every drive. I'm not quite sure why. I believe it counts the hidden .DS_Store files in every trash folder on every drive.

Error Message when trying to empty the trash!

anyone got any ideas?
In my trash are some of my old time machine back ups if that makes a difference.
I get the following error message when I try and empty the trash;
The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8003).
If I try and secure empty the trash I get the same error message:
The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8003).
any help would be good.
cheers ;o)

Hi,
Google ERROR 8003 and you will find some answers. There is one that specifically mentions Time Machine back ups.
Good luck,
Alan

Secure Empty Trash & Trash Cache

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