Secure Empty Trash hangs

I am affected by this also. I have over 400 items that I need to secure empty trash, and it hangs on 469 items every time. Come on Apple, please push out an update to fix this! It worked fine on Tiger, but has'nt worked at all for me since my upgrade to Leopard.

Scott Johnson

Steve P. wrote:
"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.

Actually, I think that's inaccurate. I have been using CCleaner on my Windows system for a long time, and the DoD erasure method, as suggested within that program, suggests a file 3-pass file overwrite, while the 7-pass erasure method is associated with the NSA.

No time to Google right now, but the author of one of the two programs in question is obviously confused.

Your right. The man pages for rm in Leopard.

-P (Overwrite regular files before deleting them. Files are overwritten three times, first with the byte pattern 0xff, then 0x00, and then 0xff again, before they are deleted.

Thanks

Same problem for me. Secure empty trash hangs after it works through a few items. Also it deletes more files than are actually in the trash visible. I even reinstalled Leopard clean to no avail.

Guys get this, I install a brand new internal HD perform a totally new clean installation of Leopard upgrade to 10.5.1 nothing else installed no migration nothing, move the pdf about stacks from the stacks folder to the trash and go to secure empty and it tells me there are 7 items!

My original HD is still in the machine and showing on the desktop but is and was "showing" an empty trash, could these extra hidden files actually be in the Leopard install?

After reading all the discussion here, this works for me with a 1.42 GHz PPC Mac Mini with a dual partition external LaCie FW drive and OSX 10.5.1. YMMV
1. Turn off Time Machine.
2. Dismount both partitions of the external FW drive.
3. Secure empty the trash.
4. Remount the external FW partitions again using Disk Utility.
5. Restart Time Machine and reselect the partition I want backup to.
6. Repeat the procedure as needed to secure empty the trash.
The secure trash seems to empty with a satisfying sound at the end. The file count while the trash is emptying is wrong. This works for me, but I'd rather the process was much easier. Dismounting only the TM backup partition doesn't work for me. I have to dismount both partitions.

leoblaisdell

I don't use Time Machine, but the part about dismounting my external drives seems to be the temporary cure for now. With the drives dismounted, the 'secure delete' goes without a hitch.
Hopefully Apple will get this resolved in the near future.

NoName,
Alsoft has a bit on their website about not repairing permissions on leopard from Diskwarrior:

"You should not use any utility to repair permissions of a Leopard start up disk while started from Mac OS X 10.4.x or earlier. Permissions will either not be be repaired or will be repaired improperly. This is true whether you repair permissions with Apple's Disk Utility, DiskWarrior, or any other third-party utility. Regardless of which utility you use, the same service within Mac OS X is used to perform the actual permissions repair so the behavior is always the same.

To repair permissions of a Leopard startup disk, be sure you've always started your Mac from Leopard. Alsoft also recommends using only the Disk Utility included with Leopard to repair permissions until an updated version of DiskWarrior is released.

Note: If you have used any utility to repair permissions of a Leopard startup disk while started from Mac OS X 10.4 or earlier, Alsoft recommends that you perform an upgrade install of Leopard over your existing Leopard install. This will restore any changed permissions to their original values without altering your data."

To whom it may concern:

Indeed I have run into this bug on both my PowerBook (soon to be disowned by me) and my MacBook Pro.

I have had this issue, even when Time Machine is "turned off", thus I disagree with the assertion that Time Machine is the culprit hither.

However, it does seem to occur at times when an external drive is connected, and I have not seen it become occurrent absent that condition being present (I use FireWire 400 currently for an external drive).

This issue began post upgrade of Leopard, and has been persistent notwithstanding the upgrade to 10.5.1 upon release by Apple recently.

Lastly, it is particularly instructive that with Tiger when a secure erase was initiated, one could do a "ps -ef | grep srm" from a bash prompt and see the execution of the erase functioning, indeed no such srm seems present when executed after such a hang.


Very Respectfully Submitted,

Stuart B. Tener
Beverly Hills, CA / Las Vegas, NV / Philadelphia, PA / Washington, DC

I also find it true that when an external drive is connected "Secure Empty Trash" hangs. When I use the Terminal and use the command "rm -Prfd ~/.Trash" when the external drive is connected the trash gets emptied, also if I use "Permanent Eraser.app" from mac.softpedia.com the trash gets emptied.
I guess the way Apple handles "Secure Empty Trash" is the problem.

To whom it shall concern:

Indeed your commentary is not inappropriate to use this software for secure trash removal; however, that notwithstanding, it is instructive that absent some several minor command line argument differentials, the srm command is basically the same as the rm command, excepting for the fact it performs a secure erase.

Thus, if you are not allergic to the shell prompt (I am not, as a 25 year System Administrator of Unix boxes) then using srm over rm might solve your secure erase issues (temporarily, albeit as well inconveniently) with an Apple supportable methodology.

While I am not adverse to GUIized software (especially that which is open source), though, I have a tendency to be desirous of asserting the leveragement of already existing capabilities which are also Apple supported within the compliment of software they provision.

Very Respectfully Submitted,

Stuart B. Tener
Beverly Hills, CA / Las Vegas, NV / Philadelphia, PA / Washington, DC

The point I was making is "srm", " rm" and "Permanent Eraser.app" all work. But Apples "Secure Empty Trash" hangs if an external drive is mounted. What I want is for Apple to repair this bug.
Some times I wonder if anyone from Apple's staff reads these Apple Discussions. I, like you, have a tendency to be desirous of asserting the leveragement of already existing capabilities which are also Apple supported within the compliment of software they provision.
What I want is for Apple to repair this bug.
I have been retired from writing OS programs for ten years now, and I have been working with Computers since 1963, and I don't see how it could be that hard for them to fix their Finder's "Secure Empty Trash" bug.

It clearly states that Apple doesn't read these boards.

If you want to give Apple feedback, use this

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I went back and looked for the statement that Apple doesn't read these boards and could not find it.
But at my age (70+) I seem to miss a lot of things these days.
Thanks a lot for pointing this out to me and giving me the web address for feedback. I sent my feedback and I guess if enough users of Mac OS X (10.5.1) send in feedback on this problem they may fix it. Thanks again

Since my last posting, I've found that I do not have to disable Time Machine, but I do have to dismount both partitions on my single external drive.