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Secure Erase Free Space

When you delete files the physical data is not immediately removed from the disk. This has the advantage that the data may be recovered (albeit with difficulty) but poses a security problem if you want to permanently get rid of the data.

With MainMenu you can securely remove all free space on a disk to make sure that the physical data from previously deleted files really is removed.

How to securely erase free disk space:

Step 1

To erase the free space on your system disk, choose Volumes > Secure Erase Free Space.

Step 2

To erase the free space on another disk, choose Volumes. Choose the disk and then Secure Erase Free Space.

To securely erase free disk space, MainMenu first fills the disk with a large temporary file containing random data. Once the disk is full, MainMenu will securely remove the file. This means that at some point your Mac will tell you that your disk is almost full; you can safely ignore this message as the disk space will be shortly reclaimed.

Should the secure erase free task quit unexpectedly and the temporary file not be removed, relaunch MainMenu and it will track down and remove any such temporary files from previous runs.

MainMenu uses 7 US DoD compliant passes to securely remove the temporary file.

You can only secure erase free space on volumes to which you have write access. This typically includes USB sticks and other external drives.

Note that this task may take a while to complete.

Related Topics

volumes tasks

secure erase