Erase Free Space

[Jmanp17]

I'm turning my Mac OS X 10.4.11 back to my school, and want to send it in as clean as possible. Does the Disk Utility's "Erase Free Space" Do the job? I have two hard drive options. A Macintosh HD and one with a 149.0 and a bunch of random letters (This one is locked), should I just do Macintosh HD?

 

[Jessica Lares]

One seems to be a backup partition. It's locked because it's just a copy of whatever's on the other drive. My school did that to the G5s too.

You'll want to do as suggested here: http://superuser.com/questions/157655/restore-macbook-pro-to-factory-settings-without-disc

 

[Jmanp17]

It's not a backup of my CURRENT files though right? Just school factory settings?

 

[Jessica Lares]

It's not a backup of my CURRENT files though right? Just school factory settings?

(I saw your PM by the way, just thought I'd post it here anyway)

No, it would be your current settings aswell.

I'm not sure why they have that to begin with, as it's most useful in a RAID where you have two drives on the same machine, the both partitions would both go belly up if the drive had an issue... Anyway... Clearing FREE SPACE would just writes empty data to the drive. You'll want to use a few tools to clean up the drive instead.

Since you're running Tiger, there are very few options since OS X has advanced 4 OS versions since then, but you should be okay with these apps:

CleanMyMac will clear any excess preferences of applications that are no longer on the hard drive. The trial should be enough for most, and you can tell it exactly what to remove.

http://macpaw.com/cleanmymac

OnyX will take care of the rest of the system files.

http://www.titanium.free.fr/download/104/OnyX.dmg

You probably don't have admin rights, so we'll just leave it at that and you'll be fine.

 

[Jmanp17]

(I saw your PM by the way, just thought I'd post it here anyway)

No, it would be your current settings aswell.

I'm not sure why they have that to begin with, as it's most useful in a RAID where you have two drives on the same machine, the both partitions would both go belly up if the drive had an issue... Anyway... Clearing FREE SPACE would just writes empty data to the drive. You'll want to use a few tools to clean up the drive instead.

Since you're running Tiger, there are very few options since OS X has advanced 4 OS versions since then, but you should be okay with these apps:

CleanMyMac will clear any excess preferences of applications that are no longer on the hard drive. The trial should be enough for most, and you can tell it exactly what to remove.

http://macpaw.com/cleanmymac

OnyX will take care of the rest of the system files.

http://www.titanium.free.fr/download/104/OnyX.dmg

You probably don't have admin rights, so we'll just leave it at that and you'll be fine.

Perfect! Thank you! I had a few private files I secure empty trashed, those files are gone for good, right? And If I remove things from my Macintosh HD, then they should remove from the other partition too?

 

[GGJstudios]

CleanMyMac will clear any excess preferences of applications that are no longer on the hard drive.

I would not recommend CleanMyMac, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​

As for deleting app-related files, in most cases, app removal software such as CMM doesn't do a thorough job of finding and removing files/folders related to deleted apps. For more information, read this and this. If you just want to delete the app, drag the .app file to the trash. No other software needed. If you want to completely remove all associated files/folders, no removal apps will do the job.

The most effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion:

Best way to FULLY DELETE a program​

 

[Jmanp17]

I would not recommend CleanMyMac, based on the number of complaints that have been posted in this forum and elsewhere. As an example: CleanMyMac cleaned too much. While you may not have experienced problems yet, enough people have that it's wise to avoid it, especially since there are free alternatives that have better reputations, such as Onyx.

You don't need "cleaner" or "maintenance" apps to keep your Mac running well, and some of these apps can do more harm than good. Most only remove files/folders or unused languages or architectures, which does nothing more than free up some drive space, with the risk of deleting something important in the process.

These apps will not make your Mac run faster or more efficiently, since having stuff stored on a drive does not impact performance, unless you're running out of drive space. In fact, deleting some caches can hurt performance, rather than help it, since more system resources are used and performance suffers while each cache is being rebuilt.

Many of these tasks should only be done selectively to troubleshoot specific problems, not en masse as routine maintenance.

Mac OS X does a good job of taking care of itself, without the need for 3rd party software. Among other things, it has its own maintenance scripts that run silently in the background on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, without user intervention.

Five Mac maintenance myths​

As for deleting app-related files, in most cases, app removal software such as CMM doesn't do a thorough job of finding and removing files/folders related to deleted apps. For more information, read this and this. If you just want to delete the app, drag the .app file to the trash. No other software needed. If you want to completely remove all associated files/folders, no removal apps will do the job.

The most effective method for complete app removal is manual deletion:

Best way to FULLY DELETE a program​

I'm giving my Mac back to my school. I have files and applications I don't want them to see. I've secure empty trashed the files, but I want to turn this thing in crystal clear. I do however appreciate that, I'll keep that in mind when I get my macbook. I don't mind harming it, since all they're going to do is probably re-image it for another student, so I feel Jessica is right.

 

[Jessica Lares]

Perfect! Thank you! I had a few private files I secure empty trashed, those files are gone for good, right? And If I remove things from my Macintosh HD, then they should remove from the other partition too?

Yep.

And yeah, I know the problems that come from those apps, mostly from people not paying attention and clicking yes to everything . The computer will probably get cleaned off as said anyway. Schools are very good about throwing out hard drives and securing them.