Is there still option to shred documents in the trash bin, I have searched and cannot find any information on it or when this option was removed
Now when you right click the Trash it say Empty Trash, no option to shred
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: Shred in trash bin
MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.5
SSD (NVMe) storage does not work the same way rotating magnetic disks work.
TL;DR - It is best to use FileVault whole disk encryption, and if you want to erase your entire SSD, you basically reformat, which throws away the encryption key.
As Niel says, on an SSD, emptying the Trash basically destroys the data.
With an SSD every write goes to a newly assigned block, and the block that was at that storage offset is put on a garbage collection list. The garbage collection list is zapped to zeros when the SSD controller is idle.
To do a multiple random erase pattern on a deleted SSD file, you would need to write a huge file until you completely filled the storage and had zero free space, then delete that file, do it again with a new random pattern, wash, rinse, repeat until you felt you has shredded the data sufficiently.
HOWEVER, each SSD write is destructive just a little bit. Each block in an SSD has just a few thousand writes before it dies and will not correctly retain data.
If you attempt to shred a deleted file by creating a huge file and writing random data for multiple passes, you will quickly destroy your storage. At that point you would be in for an expensive repair, or paying for a new Mac.
If you know you are going to be putting sensitive data on your Mac, use Disk Utility to create an encrypted .dmg image, and save the data directly to the .dmg image. When you want to destroy the data, delete the .dmg file, and forget the .dmg password.
SSD (NVMe) storage does not work the same way rotating magnetic disks work.
TL;DR - It is best to use FileVault whole disk encryption, and if you want to erase your entire SSD, you basically reformat, which throws away the encryption key.
As Niel says, on an SSD, emptying the Trash basically destroys the data.
With an SSD every write goes to a newly assigned block, and the block that was at that storage offset is put on a garbage collection list. The garbage collection list is zapped to zeros when the SSD controller is idle.
To do a multiple random erase pattern on a deleted SSD file, you would need to write a huge file until you completely filled the storage and had zero free space, then delete that file, do it again with a new random pattern, wash, rinse, repeat until you felt you has shredded the data sufficiently.
HOWEVER, each SSD write is destructive just a little bit. Each block in an SSD has just a few thousand writes before it dies and will not correctly retain data.
If you attempt to shred a deleted file by creating a huge file and writing random data for multiple passes, you will quickly destroy your storage. At that point you would be in for an expensive repair, or paying for a new Mac.
If you know you are going to be putting sensitive data on your Mac, use Disk Utility to create an encrypted .dmg image, and save the data directly to the .dmg image. When you want to destroy the data, delete the .dmg file, and forget the .dmg password.
Performing a regular erase is basically secure on SSD media. If that's not enough, encrypt sensitive data.
(260751)
Can I still shred documents using the trash bin on MacBook Pro?
