Hi guys,
So, I flubbed up today. I wanted to permanently overwrite any deleted files on my MacBook Pro harddrive, so I went into Disk Utility and selected Macintosh HD from the left menu, clicked the Erase tab, "Erase Free Space...", then selected "Zero Out Deleted Files". Now, I wasn't thinking about the fact that by overwriting unused contents of your harddrive, "0" actually takes up space of not only the files that I've deleted, but all unused space.
So that's where I'm at now. My harddrive is basically full, which is bad because I can't install any new apps. My question is, how can I delete the "free space" / "zeroed out" files? Is there some kind of defragmentation I can do?
As a note, I do not have the installation disc on me, as I'm out of town, so I can't do that.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
-G.
EDIT: I do recall skipping the last step of the zero-out process, which I assume is the "okay, now delete the zeroed out space" step. Ooops. Any ideas?
EDIT 2: Okay, so I've solved the issue without having to resort to a re-installation. What I did was download a program called "OmniDiskSweeper". After it sized up my the contents of my harddrive for a few minutes, I navigated to the Users > Garrett > .Trash > Recovered Files folder, and deleted the two EFTFile's that were in there. Problem solved.
So, I flubbed up today. I wanted to permanently overwrite any deleted files on my MacBook Pro harddrive, so I went into Disk Utility and selected Macintosh HD from the left menu, clicked the Erase tab, "Erase Free Space...", then selected "Zero Out Deleted Files". Now, I wasn't thinking about the fact that by overwriting unused contents of your harddrive, "0" actually takes up space of not only the files that I've deleted, but all unused space.
So that's where I'm at now. My harddrive is basically full, which is bad because I can't install any new apps. My question is, how can I delete the "free space" / "zeroed out" files? Is there some kind of defragmentation I can do?
As a note, I do not have the installation disc on me, as I'm out of town, so I can't do that.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
-G.
EDIT: I do recall skipping the last step of the zero-out process, which I assume is the "okay, now delete the zeroed out space" step. Ooops. Any ideas?
EDIT 2: Okay, so I've solved the issue without having to resort to a re-installation. What I did was download a program called "OmniDiskSweeper". After it sized up my the contents of my harddrive for a few minutes, I navigated to the Users > Garrett > .Trash > Recovered Files folder, and deleted the two EFTFile's that were in there. Problem solved.
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