deleting account: a 2-day long process?

[diegoemme]

Hi everybody,
I have just made a clean install of Lion because the upgrade had resulted in an extremely slow (almost unusable) MacMook. I have migrated few selected things through Migration assistant (iPhoto Library, iTunes Library, few docs). Since I wanted the present installation to be as "clean" as possible I imported my old user (lets call it A) and then I moved the libraries and the docs from A to the Shared folder, I logged out from A, I logged in as B (the "clean" user) and copied the libraries and the docs. Everything worked fine. I then decided to delete user A from system preferences (checking the "secure" mode box). Well it is "deleting the account" since 30 hours. It this normal? If not, what should I do?
thank you very much
Diego

 

[PCRanger]

It depends how much stuff you ended up deleting... Using secure delete means the sectors are overwritten with zeros, or something similar. Therefore it will take longer than just a standard deletion, which just removes reference to the file and allows the sectors to be reallocated.

 

[diegoemme]

Thanks PCRanger... apparently it was normal. After about 60 hours it managed to delete all the accounts.

 

[maflynn]

I avoid the secure ease options, mostly because my need for instant gratification supersedes my paranoia

 

[416049]

I avoid the secure ease options, mostly because my need for instant gratification supersedes my paranoia

Yeh same for me although I am wondering why would anybody need 35pass delete...

 

[HeroicEric]

Is there any way to cancel this once it starts? I need to ship out this computer I just sold and I don't have 60 hours to wait for this to finish... It won't let me close System Prefs or shutdown/restart.

 

[Crubacca]

Yeh same for me although I am wondering why would anybody need 35pass delete...

because its secure!