Permenantly Delete Items

[®îçhå®?]

Hi,
You know that there are loads of programs that can find items that you have deleted, how do you delete them properly??
I only have 1000MB of free space but i have deleted most programmes and all documents. This is the only thing that i can think off. How do you do it??
Richard

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I'm not sure I know what you mean.
Are you talking about a method for securely deleting a file? Or uninstalling or something? And what are you talking about only having 1000mb available?

If you're talking about a secure delete in the Mac OS then go to the Finder>File>Secure Delete.

I'm not sure if this is what you are asking about cause your question is rather confusing.

 

[Oryan]

If want to completely erase a file from your harddrive (write over the data with zeros) you need to put it in the trash can and then go to the finder menu and choose "Secure Empty Trash". But I think you are saying you've deleted a lot of files but aren't seeing more free space in Get Info. It might be that OSX isn't updating the free space counter. Just try rebooting your machine and it should show up.

 

[®îçhå®?]

If want to completely erase a file from your harddrive (write over the data with zeros) you need to put it in the trash can and then go to the finder menu and choose "Secure Empty Trash".

This is what i am talking about but i have already emptied the trash so would it still work?? And where did you say it was because i cannot find that option

 

[GimmeSlack12]

I don't think it will work if you already have emptied the trash. My first post says where the option is.

 

[plinden]

Apps and documents don't actually take up very much space. My iMac's /Applications folder is only 3GB (that's all apps, including the ones that come with Mac OS X - I would clear barely .5GB removing all the apps I've installed since I got my iMac) and my Documents folder is only 355MB.

You need to analyse what's taking up the most space. I've found WhatSize to be very useful for this. I got my free disk space from 25GB to 80GB by finding out what folders took up the most space (it showed me some folders I wouldn't have thought of looking at) and moving archivable stuff onto an external HDD.

Also, do you use GarageBand? If not, you can clear up 2-3GB by removing all its related files (not just delete the app, look in /Library/Application Support/GarageBand and /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/Apple Loops for GarageBand)

Edit: One way to permanently delete files without going through Trash is to open Terminal, cd to the directory containing the files you want to delete, and use the rm command. But only do this if you know what you're doing.