[Floyde]

Howdy,

Whats the best app for cleaning your hard drive? I guess like windows the trash can just deletes the file name but leaves the data in place until it is written over.
Does Cocktail have a secure delete and disk clean utility that will write random data to free space of the hard drive ths removing retreivable data?

Any ideas?

Much appreciated!

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Floyde:
Howdy,

Whats the best app for cleaning your hard drive? I guess like windows the trash can just deletes the file name but leaves the data in place until it is written over.
Does Cocktail have a secure delete and disk clean utility that will write random data to free space of the hard drive ths removing retreivable data?

Any ideas?

Much appreciated!

Use "secure empty trash" instead of "empty trash" from the finder, and you're good.

Not sure about previously "unsecurely" deleted stuff.

[Floyde]

ok, i'll do that, cheers. Is there a option to make all emptying of trash automatically secure?

[Floyde]

Anymore suggestions for a disk cleaning app?

[Randman]

To clean caches and what not, there's a number. Cocktail, OnYx and MacJanitor are very good.

If you are concerned about Internet stuff, Cookie Muncher does a very good job of letting you manage your cookies. Safari Enhancer will allow you to decativate the cache, which helps with browsing.

FruitMenu allows menu customization, including the ever-helpful "Clean Recent Lists" sub-menu. If forced to use Windows Media, you'll need to do a search and find the correct folder to lock so they playlist won't be activated.

Secure Empty Trash is built-in and finally, Safari 2.0 that will ship with Tiger will offer Secure Anonymous Browsing.

[Floyde]

Howdy..

Nah that side of things isnt a problem. I want to make sure that confidentail documents (address databases, banking stuff etc) that maybe have previously been deleted via the normal trash can, cannot be retrieved using a disk recovery program. When I used a PC there were loads of apps like HD Clean up and Evidence Eliminator that would write random data to the free space of your drive, thus removing any files that may have been deleted but not destroyed.
I was wondering if there is an app for the Mac that does this.

[Randman]

Secure Empty Trash.

[Floyde]

Yes mate, that will securely delete files as I delete them, but in the past I have deleted stuff that I want to make sure is unretrievable! Ya see what I'm getting at? I have 20 odd gig free space on my drive, but this is made up of files that have had their name deleted so that the space can be written over again.. the problem is, until the space is written over the files stay intact and a recovery program will be able to retrieve the documents. So I want a program that will write random data to the free space which will erase pervious deleted material.. there are apps out there but wanted some advice basically.