

Fortunately, Mac OS X provides targeted secure erase options Also, you may not want to erase the entire contents of a volume or disk-you may just want to securelyĮrase a few specific files or only the free space on your drive. The estimated time required to complete the erase task.īecause securely erasing an entire drive or volume can take quite a bit of time, you may find it’s much quicker to use a more If the process is going to take more than a few seconds, Disk Utility will show a progress indicator with Obviously, this method will take 35 times longer than the standard zero-out method.ĭepending on the size of the selected drive or volume and the erase option you chose, this process can take anywhere from The Mac will write 35 different passes of random and patterned This is the most secure option, which borders on paranoia. This method will take seven times longer than the standard zero-out method.ģ5-Pass Erase. Department of Defense standards for securely erasing data. To Apple, this option even meets with U.S. This is a very secure option that writes seven different passes of random and patterned information to the drive.

This is the quickest of the secure erase options, and for most usersħ-Pass Erase. This option will write zeros over all the data once. On the other hand, this choice provides a nearly instantaneous erase option. This is the default action that occurs when you erase or reformat a drive or volume. The four erase options are:ĭon’t Erase Data. Your preferred erase method and click the OK button to continue. You will be presented with a dialog allowing you to choose one of the four erase options. Here youĪre going to explore all the aspects of this tool for managing disk and flash drives. This utility from the Mac OS X Install DVD to reformat the system drive before you installed the operating system.

The primary storage management tool included with Mac OS X is /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. If you want to install the Mac operating system on a drive or you have a new drive that is completely blank, you will have For the most part, you will still be able to use Windows-formatted drives on the Mac without reformatting. Most new storage devices are either completely blank or formattedįor Windows. That is already properly formatted for full Mac compatibility. The internal disk drive originally included with your Mac is probably the only new storage device you will ever come across Apple Training Series: Mac OS X Support Essentials v10.6: A Guide to Supporting and Troubleshooting Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard
