This will display a list of all your Mac’s hard drives. For this, open Terminal and copy and paste this command: – Now, the second value you need to know is the Identifier number of the disk where you want to perform the process. Usually, using numbers ‘1’ or ‘2’ should be more than enough to perform a safe erase. Obviously, the higher the number you choose, the longer the process will take. Number ‘2’ uses a 7-pass secure erase and number ‘3’ uses a special algorithm to perform a huge 35-pass secure erase. Using number ‘1’ erases your disk’s free space using a random single pass (one ‘pass’ means that the system overwrites the deleted files once). You can actually choose between ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ here. – The first value to change is the number ‘1’. This is because this command uses slightly different values for each Mac, so before using it on Terminal, you will have to find the exact values for your Mac first. Just keep it there for now, since you will need to slightly change it before proceeding.ĭiskutil secureErase freespace 1 /dev/disk0s2
#HOW TO SECURE DELETE ON MAC TERMINAL HOW TO#
So let’s learn how to securely erase all that free space on your Mac’s hard drive with Terminal.įirst, here is the Terminal command we will be using. Important Note: Always remember to use Terminal ONLY when you are confident in what you are doing, since a simple mistake when using this utility can cause some serious damage to your Mac. Unless, of course, you delete them securely first.įor this, using the Terminal utility is perhaps the best way out, since it allows you much more control over what you are doing. What this means is that an advanced user who might come into possession of your Mac can actually recover files that you have deleted previously. Then, when you add more files to your Mac, they ‘overwrite’ the space taken by those unusable files that you deleted previously. Well, you might not know this, but once you delete any file from your Mac the usual way, the file actually remains there, only that it is no longer usable by your Mac.
0 kommentar(er)
