Secure Empty Trash hangs

Update: I think I discovered the culprit here...I turned off Filevault and decrypted all of my files last night, and this morning I immediately noticed two things

1. My hard drive miraculously recovered about 18 GB of free space. I had about 17.6 GB of free space in total before I turned off Filevault, and now I have 35

2. I was able to securely delete my files again. I initially tested with a couple of small .gif files, and then a larger folder of about 300 items. All these file were securely deleted without hanging.

So I guess there's a tradeoff to all of this...heightened security versus functionality...

Happy Convert wrote:
Update: I think I discovered the culprit here...I turned off Filevault

I have had this problem with 5 completely clean installations of Leopard, and I have never used Filevault with any supported version of OS X...

My Power Mac is now in my kids' possession, happily running Tiger 10.4.11, but I may take the Leopard plunge on one of my extra drives installed in the computer now that 10.5.1 has been released. There's no mention of the trash problems in the description of the update, but perhaps the issue has been addressed satisfactorily.

10.5.1 still doesn't help.

Hello all,

I also have the same problem with the secure delete hanging, sometimes immediately and sometimes near the end. Trash X worked and somtimes hesitantly worked for 10.5 but with 10.5.1 it gives the message that it won't run on this system...Ah, so what to do...
It is hard to believe that Apple has let this problem drag past the first update.

keith

Thanks for the report. I had tried Trash X and it "seemed" to work under 10.5.0, but I've reverted to Tiger for now. I was preparing to give the installation another try with the 10.5.1 update available, but reading these boards it still isn't fixing any of the bugs I experienced, so I will hold off. I wish I could award you some points for saving me lots of time 🙂

This problem has also been bothering me since I first installed Leopard. I don't know if this is a permanent fix or just a temporary one, but I'm having no problems using Secure Empty Trash ever since I deleted the .Trash folder and relaunched the Finder.

Launch the Terminal application and type the following (all on one line) and then hit return:

rm -rfd ~/.Trash ; killall Finder

Use the above code at your own risk! I feel extremely comfortable using the Terminal application. If you're not very familiar with it, this would not be a good thing in which to start learning.

I tried this, and it sort of fixed the problem. My Trash was "empty" before I tried this. After I did it the Trash was still "empty". I put a small file in the Trash and selected SET. After several seconds, it started emptying, saying there were 5 files to remove. It hung briefly after the blue bar moved about 20% of the way in one jump, but still said there were 5 files to delete. Then, it finished. I put another file in the trash, and and did SET again. This time the dialog opened immediately, with 5 files to delete; after a few seconds I heard the "crumpling paper" sound and it finished. So, at least two times it finished without hanging. Of course, I'm away from home and don't have my Time Machine drive connected; we'll see what happens tonight when I get home and reconnect it! It's interesting that there have been so many theories regarding why this happens, but everybody's situation seems a little different.

Needed to update my OS info - wouldn't make much sense for me to be commenting on this problem if I was running 10.4.3!

Message was edited by: drtork

Oops, spoke too soon. I did some other work for a while, then put a folder containing an empty folder (just documents in the folder previously, no apps) into the trash and selected SET. Dialog popped up saying there were 10 files to delete (hadn't put anything else in the trash before the folder), and promptly hung. 90 minutes later, still trying to delete 10 files. It's a mystery, all right; guess I'll have to just empty the trash and use another app to secure erase my disk.

drtork,

When you do find an application that secure deletes (Trash X no longer does), please let us all know.

Thanks

keith

Same problem here. Doing a Secure Empty HAS worked for me once or twice since doing the 10.5 install, but couldn't identify anything that made it work in those instances and not the others.

Also having a HECK of a time doing Repair Permissions on ANY of my drives. Takes FOREVER it seems. Wonder if the problems are somehow related?

I have used OnyX from Titanium Software in the past for general maintenance, including cleaning my disk. I downloaded a beta version from their site today (1.8.4b) that is stated to be Leopard compatible. When I opened it a scary dialog box came up stating it was beta and might not work, but I went ahead. I put three files in the trash, including the disk image for the program, and told it to secure empty the trash. It flew through, finished without a hitch, and listed the three files it deleted. So, it got the count right, and didn't hang up. My only concern is that it went so fast I'm not sure how it could have overwritten the sectors three times like it said it would. I haven't gone in to see if I can recover the files yet.

I used "killall" to relaunch The Finder when the finder hung doing a "Secure Empty Trash". I was able to do "Secure Empty Trash" until I did a restart, then I had the same problem again. I understand Apple knows they have a bug.
Until Apple repairs the bug, I'm using the Terminal and using "rm -rfd ~/.Trash" like you suggested.
Do you know if "rm -rfd ~/.Trash" overwrites the files so they can't be recovered?

As far as I understand, you'd have to add -P to that command to overwrite the files you're deleting. This could be different in Leopard, I'm not sure. I've been back in Tiger for a while now, so be sure to run *man rf* in Terminal to see the full list of usage options.

Until this bug is fixed I'm using Permanent Eraser

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23181

"Beginning with Mac OS 10.3, Apple enhanced its security by introducing the Secure Empty Trash feature, which follows the U.S. DoD pattern of overwriting data seven times.

Permanent Eraser provides an even stronger level of security by implementing the Gutmann Method. This utility overwrites your data thirty-five times, scrambles the original file name, and truncates the file size to nothing before Permanent Eraser finally unlinks it from the system. Once your data has been erased, it can no longer be read through traditional means."