How to Undo Erase Free Disk Space?

Question

Level 1

4 points

How to Undo Erase Free Disk Space?

In OSX 10.4 Disk Utility I clumsily clicked the button marked "Erase Free Disk Space" thinking it would remove cruft, only to discover it fills vacant disc space with Zeros, so now my disk is full!

Simple Question:

How do I undo what I did, and free up the zeroed out disk space?

The disc is 250 GB with only 30 GB of data, but it's so "full" now I can't even re-save an edited text file!

I have the system and data backed up, but the backup is a few weeks old.

I also have Onyx.

Posted on Jun 22, 2014 1:53 AM

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Answer 1

Limnos

Level 10

411,223 points

Jun 22, 2014 7:47 AM in response to AnoMac

Did everything proceed smoothly when doing this? Posts I can see with this issue often indicate the user did something such as try to cancel the erase. Normally it writes zeros, then deletes that file. Have you tried a normal empty trash?

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Answer 2

WZZZ

Level 6

13,220 points

Jun 23, 2014 7:19 AM in response to AnoMac

Put anything you don't care about in the Trash and then empty it. Give it a lot of time to finish.

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