deleting massive files off your hdd question.

[dsprimal]

so i have 65.7 GB of files im about to put in the trash and delete. will my mbp be just as new as it was before the 65.7 GB got put onto it?? or will there be bits and pieces of the file left behind, hence not being 100% clean like it used to be before i put the 65.7 GB file onto it.

thanks!

 

[dukebound85]

what types of files?

If its apps, they tend to put files in various places so use a program like udelete or appzapper

If it is like music/videos/documents, then yea, you will be like you were when you didn't have them

 

[sammich]

Well, not EXACTLY the same as before, but you'll be hard pressed to notice the difference.

 

[spinnerlys]

If you just empty the Trash, the files will still be there, but they will be overwritten in time as you create new files.

You can securely empty the Trash, which overwrites the files, thus physically deleting them or use Disk Utility and select the ERASE FREE SAPCE function to erase the free space.

I don't know what you mean by "will my mbp be just as new as it was before the 65.7 GB got put onto it?". The HDD will have been used, the MBP has been used so it will not be new in any way, it will just be less cramped.

 

[djasterix]

Rest of files will still be there, use securely empty trash to overwrite the data...

 

[akramer]

There are two different questions here, and I'm not sure which you're asking.

If you delete the files, they're no longer accessible via normal filesystem means. They're "gone", and aren't going to clutter up your computer or prevent you from writing new files. A file is represented by an inode and corresponding directory entries pointing at it. Once directory entries are removed and an inode zeroed out, the "file" ceases to exist.

What will remain are the data blocks (extents) that comprised the contents of the files. Someone could potentially piece together the data contained in the files if they cared to. This data would be gradually overwritten as you used the drive, but there's no way to guarantee that it's really gone without secure erasing the files (which involves overwriting them and not just deleting the filesystem metadata that points at the data blocks) or erasing free space in disk utility.

 

[dsprimal]

alright thanks for the replies everyone. now how do you securely delete items? its a movie file i had deleted. transferred it via my external hdd. and do you guys usually secure delete too? if theres a benefit to it.

thanks again!

 

[dsprimal]

the reason for asking this is because i want to partition my hd for windows 7 and i wanna make sure i have enough free space to be able to partition. after reading something online from someone with the same issue, they said they didn't have enough space to partition, although they did, but due to the full deletion of their previously trashed files, they are unable to partition now.

anyways, i just realized how to secure trash (top left under finder button) but it's only active when theres something in the trash. so what happens or what can i do about the files that are already deleted?? or is it when i should secure trash the next time i delete something from trash, that it will secure all previous data deleted too?

 

[dsprimal]

anything??

 

[Mackilroy]

the reason for asking this is because i want to partition my hd for windows 7 and i wanna make sure i have enough free space to be able to partition. after reading something online from someone with the same issue, they said they didn't have enough space to partition, although they did, but due to the full deletion of their previously trashed files, they are unable to partition now.

anyways, i just realized how to secure trash (top left under finder button) but it's only active when theres something in the trash. so what happens or what can i do about the files that are already deleted?? or is it when i should secure trash the next time i delete something from trash, that it will secure all previous data deleted too?

It only securely deletes what's currently in the trash. You can't use Secure Empty Trash on already trashed files.

If worse comes to worse, back up anything important and reformat.

 

[revbarabbas]

the reason for asking this is because i want to partition my hd for windows 7 and i wanna make sure i have enough free space to be able to partition. after reading something online from someone with the same issue, they said they didn't have enough space to partition, although they did, but due to the full deletion of their previously trashed files, they are unable to partition now.

anyways, i just realized how to secure trash (top left under finder button) but it's only active when theres something in the trash. so what happens or what can i do about the files that are already deleted?? or is it when i should secure trash the next time i delete something from trash, that it will secure all previous data deleted too?

If your hard drive was almost full and you delete that file the hard drive will still be fragmented so you probably won't be able to add a bootcamp partition, because the hard drive needs to be fairly contiguous to do a nondestructive repartition. If you try and it fails you will have to backup with time machine...erase the disk and reinstall your OS...then restore from time machine. That will make your files contiguous and unfragmented so you can repartition with bootcamp.