TS4272 erase free space stuck on creating temporary file

I upgraded to 10.7.4 and followed instructions in http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4272
At step 9 Disk Utility is stuck on 'creating temporary file' for the last 24 hours. I have canceled and tried more than once.

This may be a problem with Disk Utility on your boot drive. Try rebooting to the Recovery HD and using Disk Utility on that partition (it should appear in the OS X Tools menu). You might also try running a disk verification and repair to ensure the filesystem and partition structure are intact.
Alternatively you can also bypass the disk utility application by using the Terminal to erase free space, which can be done with the following command:
sudo diskutil secureErase freespace 0 disk0s2
Note that while the device "disk0s2" is commonly the boot drive for systems with a single hard drive, this may be different for you system. Check the device by opening Disk Utility and getting information on your boot volume, and you should see the proper device name listed as "device identifier."

Similar Messages

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?

Disk Utility - Erase Free Space - Creating Temporary File Freeze

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?
Thanks!

Then I would not do any secure erasing. It's exceptionally time consuming and unnecessary. Before you take it in for recycling boot it from your OS X installer DVD. Do this:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. 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 Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
A one-pass Zero Data option is all that is required to prevent access to your erased files.

Erase free space can't be selected or "erase" is not available

Hi
Today I found that Erase free space can't be selected or "erase" is not available , and I don't know !
I need to get free space ,I know its not a good idea but I need to do it .
So please help me ,if there is something wrong on my mac
Teach me step by step how to show that button ON
Thanks a lot

Please note that "erase free space" does not create free space. It just makes all the bits in the existing free space the same (so that nobody can recover data from the files that used to be there).
Knowing that, do you still need to erase free space?

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 made a dumb decision to 'Erase Free Space' on my drive. I now have no free space, I realize because it wrote 0's over all my free space. Is there a way to undo this??? Help please I can't save any documents now! Thanks in advance all, it is truly apprec

I made a dumb decision to 'Erase Free Space' on my drive. I now have no free space, I realize because it wrote 0's over all my free space. Is there a way to undo this??? Help please I can't save any documents now! Thanks in advance all, it is truly appreciated. how can find the hidden temporary files using the terminal what do i type in?

It's more likely a failed Erase Free Space, which creates a huge temporary file; that's why it looks like you have no more available drive space. You can recover from this. See these links
https://discussions.apple.com/message/10938738#10938738
http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/quickie/recovering_from_a_failed_secure_erase_fre e_space
Post back if you need any help with this.

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".

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 !!

Disk Utility: erasing free space

I read a recent magazine feature about file security and, based on its advice, clicked the Erase Free Space button in Disk Utility to overwrite the free space on my hard drive.
Everything ran smoothly until the last minute, when the countdown switched to "Creating Temporary File". After five minutes, a dialog box appeared warning me that the start-up disk was almost full.
I'm not concerned that I might lose material on the start-up disk since I have an external drive as a complete bootable back-up of the hard drive. But:
1. What's is being created in this temporary file and why?
2. How do I get Disk Utility just to erase the free space next time and not bother with the temporary file that seems to fill all the space (and more) that has just been cleaned?
Thanks in advance.
PowerMac G4 867MhZ Mac OS X (10.4.6) iGB RAM
PowerMac G4 867MhZ Mac OS X (10.4.6) iGB RAM

You're Welcome Norman!
I'm happy that I could help!
Also, I notice that you have not marked your topic as answered, nor utilized the Helpful or Solved options. That may be intentional, but, if you are not aware of the benefits, of using that function, here is some information.
When you mark the appropriate posts as Helpful (5 pts) 2 available, or Solved (10 pts) 1 available, you are Thanking the contributors, by awarding them points.
In threads with multiple replies, it also alerts other readers, to which answers may have been helpful, or solved the issue.
This info, and more, can be viewed by clicking on
? Help & Terms of Use, located under your login name, on all "Discussions" pages.
Specifically What are question answers?.
The Helpful and Solved buttons, that award points, are to the left of the Reply button in each response.
These are not the same as these Which do not award points, as explained Here.
Thank You, for considering extending the courtesy, of awarding stars in Discussions, as this is not a requirement, nor mandatory.
ali b

Disk Utility - Erase Free Space-what does it really do?

Hey Forum,
I am using mac os 10.6.4 on my macbook and i have a doubting question for quite sometimes, what does disk utility erase free space feature really do? Does it gives you more free space? or what? I know it prevents the recovery of deleted files but i want to know what more it does and do not do? Like, now my hdd free space kept increasing and decreasing, by a few 100 mbs or 50mbs etc, so do i erase free space so to solve this problem? Ok, i do not only want to know does it solve the previous problem, but also the questions stated in the whole long paragraph i have wrote. If you know anything related to disk utility's erase free space, feel free to tell me!
Pls help me, I need you guys' help!
Thank you.
Regards
Ala.

Erase free space simply writes zeros over the space occupied by deleted files to prevent data recovery. That's all it does. It does not give you extra disk space.
Your disk space goes up and down a bit because the system creates temporary files and logs which take up space, such as the Safari cache. You can clear these file using a utility like Onyx (which is free)

Wiping free space on Lion using Disk Utility Erase Free Space

I'm using Lion (OS X 10.7.3) on a late 2011 MacBook Pro.
FileVault is active.
I tried to erase free space on my HD using Disk Utility. It started by creating a temporary file and presented me with an indeterminate indicator-bar (one that looks like a barber pole). Activity Monitor showed an average CPU utilization of 2% by Disk Utility but disk activity was normal and usage stayed constant.
I left this process on for about twelve hours but Activity Monitor showed nothing new and the DU indicator-bar stayed indeterminate with Creating Temporary File.
I tried to skip this DU process and was presented with another indeterminate bar: Skipping. Again, AM showed nothing new so I force-quit DU and used sudo find / -type f -size +500M to see if any temporary files were created. I did not find any new files.
I rebooted and tried it from the terminal: sudo diskutil secureErase freespace 1 /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD. The result was the same: No progress.
BTW, if you run the above command, make sure you include the freespace portion. If you don't, diskutil will happily start securely erasing the entire disk.
Not being able to wipe free space using DU may have something to do with FileVault being active. Can someone confirm this?
What I love about working on a Mac is I have a Unix-based computer that I can tinker with. So I was able to wipe free space manually: dd if=/dev/urandom of=~/DELETEME followed by srm -s ~/DELETEME.
Hope this helps someone.

Bidit Mazumder wrote:
BTW, if you run the above command, make sure you include the freespace portion. If you don't, diskutil will happily start securely erasing the entire disk.
Why we don't mention such terminal commands around here.

Secure Erase Free Space

Secure Erase Free Space Failed
Secure Erase Free Space failed with the error:
Couldn't create temporary file.
Hello, I own a 15" Macbook Pro 2011 Late model but I recently replaced the hard drive with SSD and upgraded the memory to 16gb. It was working fine for about 4 months and now sometime it freezes while browsing or even opening an application. I had to restart the macbook and sometime I would get a white screen. I was able to get by the white screen by restarting constantly. I am afraid to shut this macbook down and end up with a white screen. While I got through the white screen, I was able to use the disk utility and got this message when I was cleaning up free space. My SSD has 431.82 GB free of 478.89 GB. Can anyone tell me where do I locate the temporary file or is there something else I need to fix? Please let me know. Thank you.
Vincent

I understands that.
But heres what Im talking about

Need help with the "Erase Free Space" disk utility

When I use Disk Utilities to Erase Free Space (I use the single zero mode) I get a message telling me,
"Your Startup Disk is almost Full,
you need to make more space available
on your startup disk by deleting files."
This occurs about 90% of the way through the process (based on where the blue bar is at the time) during the "Creating Temporary File" portion of the process. I know from past experience that I will remain in this portion of the process forever unless I press the "Skip" button to complete the process.
My questions,
1. What is the startup disk and why is it full?
2. What should I do about the Your Startup Disk is Almost Full warning?
3. Is my computer actually talking about "regular" disk space (I currently have about 9GB of 80GB free but have seen this warning with 30GB available as well).
4. When I press "Skip" and the blue bar continues to complete the process, have I actually erased free space?
PBG4 15" 80GB HD 1GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4)

The Disk Utility does the erase by creating large temporary files, writing to them, then deleting them. While doing this, OSX may notice the lack of free space on the disk. This is normal, but could cause problems if you are also running some applications that want some disk space. If you let if finish, it should delete the temporary files and free the disk space.
I prefer to run the Disk Utility from the Tiger install disk when doing a Verify, Repair, or Erase Free Space on my boot disk, so I know I won't be interfering with anything running.

Erase free space issues?

I am using fully updated Yosemite on two iMacs, one office, one home, and recently began having this problem: When I use Disk Utility to erase free space, the window first says it is creating a temporary file and then very quickly starts the erase process with the progress bar. This takes hours, so I usually "fire it and forget it" — let it run overnight or when I will be away from my desk. Occasionally I'll stay at my desk or return after a while and note that the erasing seems to be progressing normally. When I find that the process is finished, I see a message to the effect that the erasing couldn't be completed because the program could not create a temporary file.
Has anyone else encountered this contradiction? Is it an erroneous error message or has the free space really not been erased? Thank you.

Erasing Free Space Will Definitely Help Me and My Situation. Plus I've deleted or transferred files to an External HD, a ton of files(About 75%). And still the hard drive is reading FULL. The Erase Free Space Option just isn't working for some odd reason. So Erase Free Space Is Definitely What I'm Looking For. Any think you can think of, why it's not working properly?? And thanks for you speedy response also.

Erase Free Space SCARE !!!

I decided to erase the free space (50GB) on my eMac using Disk Utility.
On selecting "Erase Free Space" all seemed well and I was given an estimated time of 20 minutes.
At the end of this time, the progress bar was near the end of the line when a new message appeared which said something like "Writing or creating file".
This continued for several minutes and the progress bar did not appear to be moving so I pressed the "Skip" button and for a few more minutes nothing seemed to be happening. It certainly didn't stop.
In desperation I quit Disk Utility even though a warning came up saying it COULD leave my HD unusable.
I discovered that my HD had 0KB of free space.
Using "WhatSize" I found that the missing 50GB were in a "Temporary Items" file.
I tried to trash them but was told one of the items was in use, so I restarted the computer and was able to empty the trash.
The whole computer was fine and back to normal.
However, it was a worrying experience.
What did I do wrong ?
Ian.

I think you'll be fine. All that "erase free space" process does is eliminate all your free space with a big file, then delete that file. If you are really paranoid, you can have it overwrite with random data - seven times. Yes, it can take forever. Because it does fill up your drive, you shouldn't do anything else while it is running. Finally, there is a possibility that your machine could crash if your hard disk is bad. Part of your free space could be a bad place on your disk that you have just never accessed before. This is not likely, but possible.
In the future, you should consider creating a large encrypted disk image for sensitive files. Do not use FileVault. Just create a single disk image that you mount when you want to access your private files. You can even create unencrypted aliases to encrypted files inside the image. Make sure you have secure virtual memory turned on too. If you delete a file from that image, it is already encrypted so nothing to worry about. It is possible that some applications could create temporary files in unencrypted space, but you can't do much about that. This is about as good as you can get.

TS4272 erase free space stuck on creating temporary file

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for