Hard drive cleaning

[stag]

Hello all, mac newbie here...

Recently purchased a 2nd hand Mac G5 and would like to know what you people recommend as a good hard drive cleaner to permenately deleate internet surfing files?

Thx in advance
Stag

 

[Eidorian]

Do you want to erase your entire drive or just your internet cache, cookies, and history?

Safari comes with an option called Reset Safari and Private Browsing.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/

Surf Securely
Safari protects your personal information on shared or public Macs when surfing the Web. Go ahead and check your bank account and .Mac email at the library or shop for birthday presents on the family Mac. Using Safari’s new Private Browsing feature, no information about where you visit on the Web, personal information you enter or pages you visit are saved or cached. It’s as if you were never there.

That is if you have 10.4.x installed.

 

[stag]

Hi, thx for the speed in that reply...

Just to deleate internet files which become imbedded into the hard-drive (after deleating cache, history and temp files etc), so any data in unrecoverable and is perm. deleated...

Cheers
S

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Aah... after deleting everything and emptying trash you can use Disk Utility to Erase Free Space... on your drive. That should make it unrecoverable, for all practical purposes (unless you have some corporate or government secrets ).

 

[stag]

Is there not an application or programme just to deleate (make unrecoverable), internet files?

 

[sushi]

Is there not an application or programme just to deleate (make unrecoverable), internet files?

See the post above yours (2 posts above).

This feature is included in the OS. You don't need to purchase/DL additional software.

 

[stag]

Ok cheers, but unfortunately I have osx 10.3.9...

Any ideas?

ALso i use Firefox browser...

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Ok cheers, but unfortunately I have osx 10.3.9...

Does that mean there's no Erase Free Space option in Disk Utility?

 

[stag]

No idea - how do I check this as this is not something ive done before? (apologies for the newbie but hey, im learning

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

In your Applications folder you will find a Utilities folder. Inside that there's a very handy application called Disk Utility. That's a utility for most things concerning your disk(s). Start that application, choose the partition you want to do clean up, click on the Erase tab and you should get an Erase Free Space... button to click on (I think this function was there in Panther, too). Note that the cleaning process may take some time.

 

[Eidorian]

Ok cheers, but unfortunately I have osx 10.3.9...

Any ideas?

ALso i use Firefox browser...

Well I believe in FireFox 1.5 and later you have clear private data.

Tools > Clear Private Data

Also in Preferences > Privacy > Settings...

You can control if FireFox stores your data or not.

 

[stag]

Right, i guess i need firefox version 1.5... To your knowledge, this will competely deleate all files and private info such as bank details and make my machine run that little bit smoother?

Also, any other things you can recommend to spruce up the performance of my Mac?

Cheers and thx inadvance
Stag

 

[howesey]

Also, any other things you can recommend to spruce up the performance of my Mac?

Cheers and thx inadvance
Stag

Use a program called Onyx.