There no longer seems to be the option to set "secure empty trash" as the default in El Capitan. I have always set my trash to be deleted in that manner, so I was surprised that the option was entirely missing in the Finder settings.
Is it completely gone or is it just hidden somewhere.
iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11)
An issue existed in guaranteeing secure deletion of Trash files on some systems, such as those with flash storage. This issue was addressed by removing the "Secure Empty Trash" option.
About the security content of OS X El Capitan v10.11 - Apple Support
It certainly wasn't addressed given the feature was removed. That's like saying the issue of forest fire prevention was addressed by cutting down the forest. No it wasn't addressed, it was avoided.
People with flash drives need to have media specific secure deletion provided to them... in the mean time people with regular HDD shouldn't have to suffer the loss of a function. The nature of the drive can be identified on System Information so Mac OS can be designed to disable "secure empty trash" when it detects a SSD given that function would not work properly in that instance.
This is a user-based technical support community.
If you would like to submit feedback to Apple about the removal of the option, you can do so here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
People with flash drives need to have media specific secure deletion provided to them
There is no such thing - hopefully something will come along. For now, there are time consuming workarounds which include writing to disc until more than half is full, deleting that, doing it again, deleting that, installing any OS version on it, and deleting that (if I remember correctly). I've decided to make my SSD unreadable (when it goes) by using an old fashioned hammer.
As for secure erasing a regular HD - unless you are selling/giving away the Mac, there is really no need for it as the space will be written over again and again as soon as you write/delete/save anything. I have never used secure erase until I've sold the Mac, at which point I use a 3-pass erase.
Jonathan UK wrote:
This is a user-based technical support community.
If you would like to submit feedback to Apple about the removal of the option, you can do so here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
Thank you for the link. I was however hoping to find that there were indeed workarounds, which is why I came here.
When advising people on this issue, it would be better to state simply that there isn't a way to restore the feature, and if they want to know why, direct them to the link.
I found this article:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/el-capitan-beta-the-delete-immediately-fe ature
If you go past the article to the replies, there are some workarounds mentioned using terminal; I do not know if that works on either an SSD or regular HD as I have not tried it.
babowa wrote:
As for secure erasing a regular HD - unless you are selling/giving away the Mac, there is really no need for it as the space will be written over again and again as soon as you write/delete/save anything. I have never used secure erase until I've sold the Mac, at which point I use a 3-pass erase.
One can erase a disk using "Disk Utility." You can set it to erase and do up to a seven-pass zeroing which is considered by the U.S. government standard as being unrecoverable. At one time Disk Utility would allow you to zero unused space but that appears to be missing in the current app. But then it's been awhile since I have looked for that feature.
Yes, I said that I use a 3 pass erase if/when I sell a Mac.
And, Apple has also done away with the 'erase free space' option in DU.
Sadly, I have downgraded back to Yosemite. I'll stay there until I learn the issue of secure erase has been fixed. I also had a number of other bugs, and I realized that I wouldn't be comfortable having to deal with workarounds and missing features.
I see now I should have waited before adopting the new OS. Reviewers had been so positive I got too confident.
I'll stay there until I learn the issue of secure erase has been fixed
Secure erase has been eliminated. It will not come back. It cannot be used on SSDs which many new Macs come with and/or users are upgrading their hard drives to SSDs.
I want secure empty trash as the default.
