OS X Lion Disk Utility - "Erase Free Space" option greyed out

Thank you NorrinRadd for all your help. Unfortunately neither fsck -ffy nor booting in Safe mode did anything close to allowing me to Erase Free Space.

Since I did not previously erase free space (before Lion) and I can't now... I guess the only option left to explore is to find a way to boot off of another drive and Erase when booted from that drive.

They work for everyone else. Are you sure you were in single user mode when you ran fsck -ffy? BTW, when in safe mode, the trimming happens without it telling you. I dislike that method however, because it required you to fully boot twice, instead of just once, and erases all the apps that are saved to load automatically on both (the resume feature in Lion).

Ihave the same issue. I just put Lion on an SSD and it doesnt allow anything to do with erasing. I even added my permissions to the drives list of owners who can make changes.When looking at the drive info it says i have 8 gig of photos on it when i actually dont. I did have dropbox on there for a bit but moved it to the mbp backup drive. I found that info in the "About this Mac" section in the section tab on top marked "storage". I did the trip enabler and it does say enabled on the drive info now but its its still greyed out after reboot and there still are according to the info 8.12gig of photos on the ssd

I used Mac Keeper and did a check on disk usage and there was almost 8 gig of photos just in emails so using mackeeper i deleted those files and wala. my photos portion is down to almost nothing on my main drive.

So far everyone I have heard that has installed MacKeeper has only had problems with it. They have all had to remove it to solve their problems, unusally poor performance.

Allan

Well it cleans things nice for me, you just need to be aware of what you are up to when you custom dlete anything. I like it and use it on both my mac pro and macbook pro.

FWIW, if you connect the SSD using a USB/SSD adapter the Security Options and Erase Free Space buttons come back.

NorrinRadd wrote:

...I thought you wanted to erase the entire partition in order to be able to sell it?..

...You configure the security of the erase by clicking the security button (where you can select your DoD stuff).

I've done a couple of 'clean' installations from recovery but unlike my previous MBA you don't have the option to select a security level when you delete the flash drive anymore.

I'd assume that once you delete the drive and install the OS that there are none of the previous user's documents etc.

Hi everyone,

Apple diables Erase Free Space for SSD due to different storage blocks. I found a way in the internet than worked for me in the internet. Please do it at your own risk.

1. Enable Empty Trash Securely in the Finder -> Preference.

2. Just securely delete any unnecessary file once

3. Click Restart and hold C key few seconds just like we do with Option key to boot windows

Within few minutes you will get apple logo, actually it deletes the deleted files. Then you find huge empty space in your SSD.

Thank you.

I have had to remove it from too many Macs to solve the problems with them that I refuse to use it.

Besides everything that Zeobit chages for MacKeeper can be done in a much safer manner for free with other utilities/ So why should you pay them for it. Maybe to line their pockets with gold.

Allan