[posthumanus]

hi there,

i'm curious about this little waste basket and its contents (past & present)

i know i can 'secure empty' whatever's in there at the moment, but is there an app that'll shred the remains?

if 'trash' is a space, then i'd like to go in and 'zero out data' occasionally

posthumanus

[Art Vandelay]

Disk Utility's Erase Free Space command.

[posthumanus]

yes, i understand that

but is there an app/process designed to specifically target & cremate an empty trashcan?

[posthumanus]

i think the term 'cremate' should now enter the internet's dialogue. i officially lay claim to this

this will get me absolutely nowhere: which is exactly where i am now

(but at least i'm nowhere in a south-pacific paradise)

posthumanus

[AKcrab]

Awesome.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by posthumanus 

hi there,

i'm curious about this little waste basket and its contents (past & present)

i know i can 'secure empty' whatever's in there at the moment, but is there an app that'll shred the remains?

if 'trash' is a space, then i'd like to go in and 'zero out data' occasionally

that's exactly what secure empty does, except it doesn't zero, it overwrites with random junk seven times (much more effective than zeroing).

That doesn't apply to past treasures, though - just to the stuff presently in the .Trashes folder.

[Art Vandelay]

And the only way to securely wipe out any old trash from before that wasn't securely emptied is to use Disk Utility.

[Big Mac]

posthumanus, the Trash is just a metaphor for the user's benefit. Files moved to the Trash don't get physically moved on the disk to a trash realm. During a normal empty of the trash, the system just erases the directory listing of the file(s) that allow the filesystem to know where the files are; without that listing the file is eligible to be overwritten by new files. That's why utilities can recover some deleted files if you haven't written much else to the disk since they were deleted. With a secure delete by comparison, the file gets explicitly overwritten with blank data so that it can't be recovered.

As others have said, the only way to securely delete items normally deleted in the past is to securely erase the whole disk since you don't know where the older trashed files are located and whether they still exist or have been overwritten.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

As others have said, the only way to securely delete items normally deleted in the past is to securely erase the whole disk since you don't know where the older trashed files are located and whether they still exist or have been overwritten.

You probably meant this, but just to clarify: you don't have to securely erase the whole disk. You just have to securely erase the whole empty space of the disk.

[Big Mac]

Yeah, sorry about that.

[-Q-]

I'd securely erase the whole disk. You know, nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

[posthumanus]

thanks for that:

now i'll wait for 'cremate' to catch fire: but i'm betting my 15 minutes of fame are already over

posthumanus

[Cold Warrior]

Cremate is a good descriptor if you ever go this route:

How-to: Thermite hard drive destruction - Hack a Day

[Thorzdad]

If I may piggyback on this discussion...Let's say I have 5 items in my Trash, and I do a Secure Empty Trash. When I look at the progress bar, it says it's emptying more than 5 items. In this case, maybe 8 items. I'm assuming when I "move" something to the trash, there are various invisible files that go along with them, and these are the extra files in the count?

[Big Mac]

An application is really an application bundle that contains many files, which I imagine you're most likely aware of. There are other bundle file types that appear as one file but contain many. And custom icons are sometimes separate files.

[Art Vandelay]

I think it's counting the number of files plus the number of secure wipes which is 7 IIRC. I just secure emptied a single text file and it started at 8. I then trashed 35 images and the count started at 42.

And yes, bundles come into play too and will increase the count beyond what you'd expect but not in the above examples.

[Thorzdad]

Yeah, I knew about the bundles, now that you reminded me.

[reader50]

Also, most any folder you trash will contain an invisible .DS_Store file. Along with another for each subfolder.