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But you can use it to securely wipe the free space on an HDD using the free version of CCleaner.

If you didnt already securely delete your files, its not too late.

If you have a regular spinning hard drive (HDD) in your Mac, you can securely wipe the free space on your Mac, preventing recovery of any files that were not securely deleted.

If your Mac has an SSD, you do not need to securely wipe the free space and you shouldnt.

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Today well discuss what happened to the Secure Erase Free Space feature in Disk Utility on your Mac and how to securely wipe the free space on your Macs HDD without that feature.

What Happened to Secure Erase Free Space in macOS The Secure Erase Free Space feature in Disk Utility on your Mac added a layer of privacy and security to file deletion.

The feature allowed you to overwrite the free space on a drive to prevent deleted files from being recovered.

Because most Macs now come with Solid State Drives (SSDs) instead of regular hard disks, Apple feels there is no need for the feature.

When you erase files normally on an SSD, its difficult to recover that data.

Apple explained that you dont need to securely erase your Macs SSD in their online knowledgebase: With an SSD drive, Secure Erase and Erasing Free Space are not available in Disk Utility.

These options are not needed for an SSD drive because a standard erase makes it difficult to recover data from an SSD.

Use FileVault to Keep Your Data Safe Whether you have an SSD or an HDD, you should use FileVault to protect your data.

FileVault encrypts your whole drive so all your files are protected.

Securely Wipe the Free Space on Your Mac Using the Command Line Before wiping the free space on your Mac using the command line, back up your data.

Once youve backed up your data, open the Terminal app from the Applications Utilities folder.

Then, type the following command at the prompt and press Enter.

This indicates you are only erasing the free space on the drive and not the entire drive.

The number 4 indicates the wipe level performed on the drives free space.

You can use 4 for the wipe level, or select a different option from the following list: 0 Single-pass zero-fill erase.

Single-pass random-fill erase.

US DoD 7-pass secure erase.

Gutmann algorithm 35-pass secure erase.

US DoE algorithm 3-pass secure erase.

The more passes you do when wiping the free space, the longer the process takes.

Replace Macintosh HD with the name of the volume you want to wipe the free space on.

If the name of the volume contains a space, type a backslash in front of the space, like we did in our command.

When the wiping process finishes, youll see a message and youre returned to the command prompt.

Securely Wipe the Free Space on Your Mac Using CCleaner CCleaner for Mac has fewer tools available than CCleaner for Windows.

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