Wiping free space on an OS X volume

[pmartin]

Hello, I was just wondering if any of you knew of a program that can wipe the free space on a hard drive (overwriting with zeroes is all that's necessary, even if it's not that secure.)

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Disk Utility.

You'll find it in /Applications/Utilities/

Just look under the Erase tab.

[pmartin]

Originally Posted by Mitthrawnuruodo

Disk Utility.

You'll find it in /Applications/Utilities/

Just look under the Erase tab.

/slaps head

Thanks

[userXMZ]

Apple's Disk Utility, however, does not seem to wipe file slacks when wiping free space, resulting in an incomplete erase of free space. File slacks is the space after a file's data ends and until the file system block ends, and on a modern harddrive it can constitute gigabytes of data. Forensic investigators frequently find interesting information in file slack.

To wipe free space AND file slack, you need to use Jetico's BCWipe.

For a tutorial, see http://wipeosx.wordpress.com/

[2012Tony2012]

Originally Posted by userXMZ

Apple's Disk Utility, however, does not seem to wipe file slacks when wiping free space, resulting in an incomplete erase of free space. File slacks is the space after a file's data ends and until the file system block ends, and on a modern harddrive it can constitute gigabytes of data. Forensic investigators frequently find interesting information in file slack.

To wipe free space AND file slack, you need to use Jetico's BCWipe.

For a tutorial, see http://wipeosx.wordpress.com/

Does Jetico's BCWipe work on imac? And is there a free alternative?

[Mr. Retrofire]

Originally Posted by userXMZ

Apple's Disk Utility, however, does not seem to wipe file slacks when wiping free space, resulting in an incomplete erase of free space. File slacks is the space after a file's data ends and until the file system block ends, and on a modern harddrive it can constitute gigabytes of data. Forensic investigators frequently find interesting information in file slack.[/URL]

AFAIK, this is no problem on HFS+ volumes, because (Mac) OS X writes zeroes in each block before it writes the data in the block. (Mac) OS X does this since Mac OS 8.1 (no, not 10.8.1).