Q: Where is SECURE ERASE FREE SPACE in El Capitan Disk Utility ?

Oops, I misread your question. They were under my Documents folder.

It's not difficult to securely erase an SSD, any microwave (500 Watts or more) will do a thorough job.

The secure erase feature is still there in El Capitan's Disk Utility.

The trick is to select the volume (not the drive) from the list on the left of Disk Utility.

An erase-this-volume screen appears.

Click the Security Options button in its lower left corner.

Very true - I tried the usual erase free space.... looked at the security option....

Didn't read the rest and by mistake deleted my ENTIRE EXTERNAL HARDDRIVE

and there is NO OPTION to STOP THIS!!!!

Thank God for Backups!

The secure erase feature is still there in El Capitan's Disk Utility.

 

The trick is to select the volume (not the drive) from the list on the left of Disk Utility.

An erase-this-volume screen appears.

Click the Security Options button in its lower left corner

CleefMon,

Thanks for this post - it was very helpful. Whats odd is that I could swear I looked at this window several times, but since I had already repartitioned the drive I was only selecting the entire drive. The trick is that for some reason Disk Utility doesn't refresh itself anymore. You have to quit and re-open Disk Utility to make the new partition selectable again if you've ejected it. I ejected the partition assuming that I needed to select the whole disk for the secure erase.

This whole conversation about secure wiping SSDs and using FileVault overlooks that many of us still have reasons to physically erase an entire disk. As an IT guy my Mac is my go-to tool when I'm troubleshooting odd problems on other machines (you need something reliable when everything else goes down...). I find myself being the go-to guy for friends and family. So when a neighbor leaves their old laptop with me trusting that I'll take care of cleaning their data, I need the tools to take care of that. So when my erase options have gone missing, I start to wonder what's happening at Apple. No need to worry, everything is the same at Apple. They like to take things you are comfortable with and move them around, so yup everything is the same.

Anyway, there are many many reasons to keep secure erase around. Just now it's per volume instead of per disk. So to erase an entire disk, you have to repartition it to a single volume, then secure erase the new VOLUME, not the disk. And be aware that Disk Utility might not show you the new volume until you relaunch it.

The command needed is

• diskutil secureErase freespace LEVEL /Volumes/DRIVENAME
• where level is the type of freespace pass: 

    1 - Single pass randomly erase the disk.

    2 - US DoD 7 pass secure erase.

    3 - Gutmann algorithm 35 pass secure erase

    4 - Three pass secure erase

To get /Volumes/DriveName use diskUtil list which should give something like /dev/disk0s2

Worked for me

To use erase free space with Mac OS 10.11 installed:  Requires a DVD drive and copy of an apple OS X installation DVD with the older version of Disk Utility (for example Snow Leopard).  Boot up your Mac using the DVD as the OS (on system boot hold down the C key as the Mac boots up. This tells the computer to load from the disc rather than from the internal hard drive). Open Disk Utility from the menu options.  The older version of Disk Utility will allow one to perform a secure erase as in the past.  I have performed an erase free space with this approach on my MacBook Pro with internal hard drive.   I have not tried this on an SSD.