Wipe a file

How do I wipe a file on OS 10.6.8?

Finder > Secure Empty Trash
per the following Apple Information file:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh475.html
appears to answer the question.
Thank you for responding.

Similar Messages

How do I truly wipe out files from my Mac?

I have a ton of music and videos on itunes. I often right click on the file and select move to trash. Is this all I have to do to truly clear out the file from my computer? Or do I need to go into the finder and manually grab the file and toss it in the trash?
Thanks!
Jay.

"move to trash" really does move the file to the trash. once you empty the trash, the file is gone.

Malignant secondary boot device. When I plug in an external hard drive which has time machine in one partition and a secondary boot device in another, the secondary boot takes over and wipes existing files. How do I turn it off but keep the time machine

Please help new (senior) convert to Mac Pro (OS X). Am following the 'switching to a Mac' portable genius 2nd ed, and as it advised, I bought an external hard drive (a Mac My Word) and partitioned it with one partition for a secondary boot device and another for time machine. Book implied I needed both. Seemed to download OK but now when i plug in the external hard-drive it wants to reboot me fresh all over again. How do I keep the time machine partition going but have the secondary boot device only in case of emergencies? Do I 'eject' that partition- and if so how do I do it from outside the hard drive (I am not game to reattach it currently)

Launch the System Preferences application (under the Apple menu) and select the Startup Disk preference pane. Set your internal drive as the startup disk. Close the window.

Wipe Mac - save Iphotos to EHD

Im trying to wipe my computer fresh (as if i were selling the machine) And then i plan to reinstall my snow leaopard disk. I would like to backup my photos from iphoto to the Seagate 1tb backup plus external hard drive i purchased lastnight.
After i wipe and reinstall as a fresh new machine with no time machine or anything else, I would then like to synch my presumptivly empty iphoto with the photos on my EHD - i.e. be able to forward any new photos over to the EHD when i connect my iphone.
I will also be upgrading to mountain lion after my system wipe.
Is this going to be possible? I'm afraid that when i synch the new (empty) iphoto to my iphoto library on my EHD it will wipe the file on my EHD.
Thanks for reading and feel free to give me a hard time on how computer illiterate i sound.

Move the Library to the external drive.
Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Afterwards move it back.
A Comment if I may: If you're 'computer illiterate' why on earth are you wiping the HD? I've used macs for 20 years now and done this exactly once for a very specific problem. What is the problem you are hoping to solve?
Regards
TD

Delete Previous Version - file associations

Have a question on file association problems when deleteing previous version of PS.
For example user bought CS5 and installed. File Associations now changed by defauilt to CS5.
If user un-installs CS4, the file associations now revert back to CS4, even though that version is not on computer.
Changing file associations is Bridge and in the OS does not solve file association problem.
One either has to uninstall PS and wipe Adobe files, then re-install latest version, or go into OS registry and make changes. Registry changes can be difficult for many.
I am sure when CS6 is released we will again have this same scenero, as outlined above, repeated unless the code has been changed.
The question is: In CS6 will this bug have been eliminated?

Just because it's happend to multiple people doesn't make it not machine or user specific (a problem with user permissions on one computer can happen on another as well). I've never seen this behavior on any of my systems and I have to install and uninstall random versions of the software all the time. The most recently installed version of the software should always have the file type associations, regardless of what versions have been removed.
Have you been able to reproduce the issue on your own machine during testing?

Premiere hangs when it cant find cache files

Hi all,
My question:
How do I force premiere to open my projects without searching endlessly for cache files?
If this cant be done:
What is the best way to create a network based central cache folder from which multiple users can draw from. (the problem of course is the potential for this file to grow exponentially)
Background
9 times out of 10 when I attempt to load my premiere projects off the network, the load bar will reach just about 95% and hang for an eternity. We have identified that our company bandwidth was getting a bit overloaded but I think another issue has reared its ugly head.
Our company stores all premiere files and related footage on the network to allow for easy access from many users. However, when a user who did not create a certain project attempts to open it on their desktop, the same loading problem comes up. It appears that if I push my cache files to the network, point premiere to that folder, the file loads rather quickyl (indexing aside).
So can I force premiere to give up on a hopeless search of the local computer for cache files and if not, how can I create an organized system where many users can pull from the same cache folder. You will notice, if i simply create a central folder the following will take place:
The folder will grow
I will have to wipe it
files will stop loading while premiere desperatly attempts to find non existant cache files.
Thanks for your help.

Some reading
Win Server is NOT supported http://forums.adobe.com/thread/851602?tstart=0
Not in a Network environment http://forums.adobe.com/thread/771151?tstart=0
-and not on a "domain" http://forums.adobe.com/thread/858977?tstart=0

Copy file name to IPTC (core) Instructions

Hello
In the past Paul has written some great scripts to autuomate my Bridge workflow. I'm hoping for another brilliant concoction.
I wish to copy my file name to the IPTC core- 'Instructions' field so that the original name will be preserved somewhere in case renaming more than once wipes that file name out of the File Properties palette.
Thanks!
Don

I have Bridge CS2 and CS3 and for some reason the CS3 version has the "Preserve Filename..." checkbox grayed out and I cannot figure out why. I was also looking for a way to view the "Preserved Filename..." and the only way I could do this was by using Bridge CS2 (since it isn't working for me in CS3), going to rename the file I am trying to view the old name on, and select "Preserved Filename" under the dropdown menu. This is a huge hastle and for some reason Lightroom 1.0 does not have the capability of preserving filenames at all! The DAM capabilities of Lightroom truly need work, but it is a wonderful application nonetheless, and I use it now for everything and haven't needed to use Bridge since I got Lightroom.

Do I have to back up files before downloading OS X Lion?

Hi Guys im really need some quick advice.
Im looking to upgrade from snow leopard to OS X Lion, do i need to back up my hard drive before doing so? I've just started up as a freelance graphic designer and i've not yet got all my files backed up and im worrie dif i download Lion it'll wipe my file and documents out.
I've got a feeling it's going to be as simple as downloading an app right?? But i just want to make sure. My terabyte hard drive pack in last year and i've yet to by a new one due to lack of funding!! So im really really paranoid about doing this.
Is anyone able to advise me on if i should do this or not?? Im desperate for Lion and even more so Mountain Lion when it's launched this year.
Thank you so much guys, sorry if i sound like a complete newbie and a novice, im just paranoid!

MissMaccabee wrote:
Also can any one reccomend a good desktop hard drive? Preferably 750-terabyte.
I hope meant 750 gigabyte and not 750terabyte. 750terrabyte
would be a small server farm!
Anyway, for external drives, I personally use devices
from Seagate, Iomega, and G-drive. All of them have seemed
very reliable for backup and just external storage. Avoid
Western Digital products. I have always had very bad luck
with them and avoid their products like the plague.
I currently have a pair of 2TB Seagate GoFlex desktop
drives for media and media backup connected to my
Airport Extreme and they have been performing without
issue.
If you are depending on your computer for business, it is
IMPERATIVE to have a clone back up of your system.
It is the price of of a computer based business and
the cost down the road will be much higher than the cost
of the drive if something goes wrong and you can't get
back up and running immediately.
Remember, one of the articles of Murphy's Law states
that things will fail at the worst possible time.

Unix admin question - file system is filling up

Oracle 9.2.0.1.0
UNIX AIX 5.2
The oracli3 filesystem was hitting the upper 90%s and I informaed the DBA. Learning from him is just leaning over his shoulder scribbling down as much as I can see while he thrashes through it.
I gleaned some things today that I wanted to check with tthe UNIX pros out there.
As I explained, that particular filesystem was filling up, and so he made some searches, first in the /patches directory. There were not too many there (in size), so he next went to /oracli1/oracle/iAS and did a search for logs like this:
sudo find . -name '*.log' -ls
He found one huge log file, and so had me do the cat /dev/null > command to send it to the black hole.
My question is this - when I next see that we are filling up as it were, should I automatically look for logs? Are they the culprits some of the time? Can offending logs be dealt with in this way (cat /dev/null >) ?
Is there something else I should be looking for ? (The oracli3 is now at 93% so I think we still have things to look at)
Many thanks.
DA
Sorry - one other thing - when I use the
find . -name '*.log' -ls command, how can I change it so that the output is more like that of the "more" suffix? The problem is that I would like to scroll through the output of .log files that this command throws back at me.
Message was edited by:
Dan A

It all depends.
When you assume there's nothing useful in those log files, you hire an Unix admin with zero knowledge of Oracle and have hem wipe those files away, 'because the file system fills up'. In the past we had similar administrators throwing away archived redo log files for exactly the same reason.
YOU on the other hand should set up proper administration procedures to move them away, tar them, and compress the tar file, so they take less space. After another 30 days you throw away the compressed tars.
What you have now is a very unprofessional method to 'administrate' a server.
Actually you are not administrating it all, because when disaster strikes, or disaster stroke in the past, and you need to explain and find out what happened and especially WHY, you will be yelling at the Unix 'admin' because he just has thrown away all log files, 'because the disk was getting full'
As to the second question:
There are a few fundamental concepts in Unix
1 ALL output can be redirected using > < and |, The latter symbol is called the pipe symbol and feeds the output into a filter. The filter is a command which reads the output from a previous command and processes. More, pg, and sort are filters, even sqlplus can be a filter
2 NO special switches should be implemented in any command if you can accomplish it using redirection or filters. So you won't find
TYPE/PAGE (VMS, Dos), but you will find cat <filename> | more
So the answer is you need to add | more to the command line
find . -name '*.log' -ls | more
You would also be advised to try to follow an Unix course, as your question is very fundamental. Alternatively buy the book Classic Shell scripting
Sybrand Bakker
Senior Oracle DBA

Disappearing files on external hard drive?

Hey guys,
I'm new to this forum here, but I really need some insight into a huge problem I am having as of late.
I'm running a Macbook Pro, and have a Seagate External Hard Drive connected to it.
On the drive I have tons of movies, tons of music, and a bunch of photography.
About a week ago I noticed that one of the folders with my photography was empty. None of the hard drive space was changed, but upon opening the folder it contained no files, they had disappeared.
Now two days ago, I went to open up the expansion drive, and ALL of the files had disappeared. But again, no space on the hard drive has changed.
Weirdly enough, all of my music I have on that external i had previously added to my itunes library. When I open up itunes, I can play all my music, but when I open up the expansion drive, they have all disappeard ?!
I searched everywhere for an answer to this issue online but have not found anything to help me.
I'm a photographer and I have some major projects on there I need to get finished. If anyone could help me with this, I would be forever grateful !
Thank you !

I've been looking through a lot of this same issue here and elsewhere, and I'm appalled at the misdirection and finger-pointing that some people are throwing out. It is useful to run a Disk Repair, but when a file is missing, it's missing and you can't bring it back with a Disk Repair. Doing a Disk Repair might tell you that something was wrong with the directory structure that could have been involved in causing the files to disappear - but it doesn't help explain why files disappear when Disk Repair doesn't find anything wrong with the directory structure. And I've gone the extra step and used DiskWarrior to further test the drive.
I'm running Lion on my iMac. Everything is always kept up to date. I recently discovered many missing files in my external drive. Here's the scenario: Folder A contains folders B, C, and D. There are files in all of A, B, C, and D. Suddenly, all files in B, C, and D disappeared. A Disk Repair found nothing wrong with the drive.
I have been involved with some of my clients who were running Snow Leopard. One of them lost dozens of photos from iPhoto, the other lost several different kinds of files from different places. I carefully examined their systems and could find nothing wrong, and my job is to know how to find a problem with a Mac and fix it. I have also ruled out anything that might have been user error.
So, as far as I'm concerned, this condition of disappearing files has been around for a while. If Apple doesn't want to acknowledge it, it's only because they haven't experienced it themselves - and nothing that happens in the field can ever be verified or reproduced on command.
The one and only way I know of that would help track this down is a full Time Machine backup of the drives involved. In my case, I would need a 5TB drive. And since files disappear from external drives as well as internal drives, it would also be necessary to have multiple Time Machine drives to swap in and out periodically in case the OS decides to wipe out files in Time Machine. Then, rather than wait to discover that a file is missing, the content (structure) of the latest Time Machine backup would have to be compared to previous backups and a report provided showing the differences. This can be done fairly easily using a shell script - something I am quite experienced doing - and it might even be turned into a utility app. Something for me to work on. But even with this, it might take months before the user notices that the report is showing missing files that should not be missing. Human interaction is required for such a report. And on a daily basis, the user will delete files, so taking notice of which ones that are really missing will require some intense scrutiny and awareness by the user.
That said, Apple needs to step up its own analysis of disappearing files - and quickly. And this means acknowledging that such a thing actually happens.

Is there any way to completely wipe my hard drive clean without losing the basic operating system

is there any way to completely wipe my hard drive clean without losing my operating system

Stellar Wipe Mac is a wiping software that wiper a hard drive beyond the scope of recovery. You can select from the software which drive to wipe leaving the OS X intact. Else, if the drive is a single partition then no software will be able to wipe without wiping the OS X. So be careful.
More Info on Disk Wipe Mac - http://www.stellarinfo.com/data-safety-eraser/wipe-mac/file-eraser-mac.php

Follow up to earlier problem

Following on from my flashing question mark problem (see a few topics down)i have followed the instructions carolyn gave me up to the disk utility. When in disk utility i can only see the DVD media drive and the OS X installation CD, but not the hard drive which i normally repair.
Am i okay to install the OS X, or will this totally wipe my files? (photos, music, work) thanks for any help:)

Welcome To  Discussions Ands43!
It is not necessary to start a new Topic, regarding the same issue.
Please repost this entry in response to your Previous Topic.
ali b

TS1567 my Iphone 4s will not show up in itunes or my computer

my Iphone 4s will not show up in itunes or my computer, I upgraded from windows 7 to windows 8. i have tried all the above and lots more and nothing seems to work. i have a ipod mini and its the same with that. they show up in the device manager under other devices but is says "This device is not configured correctly.(code 1)" and when i try to update driver it says "windows found driver software for your device but encountered an error while attempting to install it. please help

After being on the phone for hours to apple who were very helpful i had no luck we triad everthing, While waiting for a call back today i refreshed windows using the upgrade disk i had from my upgrade from windows 7 to windows 8. it did not wipe any files but did delete lots of apps but gave me a list of deleted apps. Then I reinstalled itunes and connected ipad then iphone and it finaly loaded the driver and alowed me to synk with itunes.

IPod 4th Gen accidently wiped of photos / videos, no backup on computer.

My daughter owns a brand new Ipod Touch 4th Generation. Last weekend she took a great deal of photos on it, and video from a convention.
Last night connected the Ipod to her new laptop. Itunes was not set to sync photos or video, only her music library.
When she connected the Ipod, it synched. Upon synching, it erased all her photos, except 2 she had taken that day, and erased 4 hours of video files.
There was no backup of these files on Itunes, as the Ipod and computer were both fairly brand new.
First: Why would Itunes wipe these files when Itunes was not synched to photos or video, only music?
Second: She is very upset that she has lost everything. I am a computer technicaian and have been able to recover files from SD cards, hard drives, and even older Ipods, files that were deleted even up to a year ago, but this new Ipod Touch 4 is so locked down I can not recover anything at all.
Does anyone know any method the the Ipod Touch 4 can be seen as a hard drive so I can run a file restore scan on it to recover the recently deleted files?
Very disappointed that Apple has such technology that would wipe a users files just by connecting it to a computer. The same thing happd end on my Iphone when it upgrade to IOS 6.0 - lost several days of photos and music.
I understand most people use the Cloud these days for backup, but the average teenager, or person in general is not that sophisitcated.
Thanks!

I am not sure if people are reading what I wrote wrong or misunderstanding it.
The computer is new. The Ipod is new.
This is the first time EVER the ipod has been synched with ANY computer let alone this one.
The ipod only had a few songs, games that were downloaded right off the Itunes store.
The photos / videos were taken recently and for the very first time we connected it to a fresh install of Itunes so that we could download the photos and videos to the computer. It backed up the Ipod. The backup date was the same date as the time the files were wiped.
The photos and videos were wiped from the device. Itunes was not set to synch photos and video, It should not have wiped anything.
The answer I need is anyone aware of software that can access the Ipod and rebuild the deleted items. This can easily be done on Windows based and Android based software and hardware. Why such a flaw in apples software? Also the Ipod touch 1, 2nd and 3rd generations did have a disc mode, I owned all three of those Ipods. The Ipod Touch 4 appears to no longer have disc mode.
Technically I guess my daughter has lost everything. Thanks apple!

Help - upgrading from Tiger to Snow Leopard AND new larger hard drive, MBP

Howdy!
My iPhone has finally demanded that I upgrade my MBP from Tiger. And as if by coincidence, my now puny 100GB internal drive is packed full with less than a gig free most of the time. (10% free is the MINIMUM free allowance, I know!!) I run old copies of Adobe CS2, Quark, Quickbooks, Microsoft Office... would love to keep them working without purchasing upgrades, but probably isn't a realistic hope. None of it is mission critical at this point.
So I've purchased the $29 Snow Leopard DVD (from a reseller - it says CPU Drop-In DVD Version 10.6 on the disk), and a new 750GB internal drive (same reseller - The drive is a 2.5" SATA 5400RPM 8MB-Buffer Hard Drive (9MM Slim) (RoHS Green Friendly)), to get with the times.
My other resources include:
- two 1TB LaCie external drives with FW and USB2 ports
- one other LaCie external drive - I think 360GB?
- Retrospect 5.0 (most of my backups are encrypted Retrospect files on those three LaCie external drives, but there's some room on them)
- a $22 USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE adapter with AC power, to access whatever laptop drive might be without an enclosure temporarily
- a copy of Carbon Copy Cloner software
- I just ordered an upgrade to my ancient (OS9) copy of DiskWarrior
- A monster UPS battery backup and line conditioner that everything plugs into for this process
It has been a long time since I've DIY'd any undertaking this complex, and I'm looking for advice on what to do first, how to go about this.
Here's my setup:
Model Name: MacBook Pro 15"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per processor): 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP11.0055.B08
SMC Version: 1.2f10
I'm guessing I should do it like this, PLEASE EDIT or make suggestions or tell me what I forgot to do before I do it!!
1. Back up everything to at least two external locations! Also, make a bootable copy of my current internal drive in its own volume, to at least one external drive that is formatted in HFS+ GUID partition style, with Carbon Copy Cloner (would Retrospect work well for this instead?).
2. Free up at least 20GB on the current internal drive (100GB). Hopefully 30GB.
3. Run Disk Utility on the current internal drive. Fix any problems. (Should I hit it with DiskWarrior instead?)
4. Format the new 750GB drive to HFS+, GUID partitions. (How long will that take? Can I do it with the USB-SATA cable adapter, sitting on my desk, or does it have to be in an enclosure? The adapter has AC power)
5. Run Disk Utility (or DiskWarrior?) on the new internal drive in its temporarily external position. Fix any problems.
6. Boot off the Snow Leopard CPU Drop-In DVD and install onto both drives. (Will this version of the DVD I have wipe all files when it installs to a disk???)
7. See how they run. Boot off the old 100GB internal drive, boot off the new to-be-internal 750GB drive. Panic if it's not going well.
8. If the current internal 100GB drive is rocking Snow Leopard and my familiar files and apps seem somewhat functional, use Carbon Copy Cloner to recreate the volume on the new larger drive. Then swap the drives physically. (Links to good step-by-step instructions on this part would be much appreciated here!!)
9. If the Snow Leopard DVD overwrote or snuffed out my familiar files and apps on the old internal drive, sigh deeply, then swap the drives physically. Use CCC (or Retrospect? or Migration Assistant?) to fetch my junk from the old internal drive's backup and plunk it on the new bigger internal drive (now installed).
10. See how it runs. Shake my fist at the sky over the planned obsolescence of technology paired with the seductive power of my iPhone. Grumpily upgrade the software that I actually create income with.
Please help! I am just faking it here based on a few message boards I've read. Will this actually work properly?
Thanks!

Howdy slowpoke43, and a warm welcome to the forums!
Please help! I am just faking it here based on a few message boards I've read. Will this actually work properly?
LOL, if your faking it you're the best!
1. Yes, absolutely... no CCC would be best in my experience/opinion.
2. Yes, the more he better... Free Space is no longer our Free Space, but OSX's.
3. Indeed, & if you have the correct version of DW, do that.
4. Yes, not long, A/C power is great.
How to format your disks...
http://www.kenstone.net/fcphomepage/partitioningtiger.html
(To Install OSX on an IntelMac the Drive it needs the GUID Partitioning scheme mentioned at the bottom.)
Thanks to Pondini, Formatting, Partitioning, Verifying, and Repairing Disks...
http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html
6. Yes, boot off the 10.6 DVD, & no Snow Leopard does by default what we used to call an Archive & Install, saves & updates all your info, APPs, Music, etc., it may quarantine a few things or not but will tell you.
7. Absolutely, but Panic won't be needed with your great preparation & Bootable Backups!
8. Not quite sure I understand, but run SL for a few days before you do anything.
9. Yeah, but again with you doing everything right from the gitgo, I can't picture that happening.
10. Yes indeed, the hangup with yours is that it only holds 2GB of RAM... a pain in 10.5 & up IME.
Again let me say... GONGRATS, I've never ever seen anybody so well prepared & informed despite your diffidence!

Wipe a file

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