How to "wipe" ALL Mac file's slack space?

After successfully "wiping" old deleted files from my Mac's hard drive,
WITHOUT harming any legitimate files inside my Vista partition, I am
getting greedy, want more!

I now want to wipe the slack space in disk file "clusters".

WHAT? (and why should we care?)


Well, gentle people, think of it this way. Some computer-literate
divorce lawyers make a pretty good living by gleaning incriminating
evidence from their victims hard drives, specifically from cluster slack
space.

Evidence such as bank account numbers, like: 05173 62045




But, you protest, I wiped all the "free space" on my Mac using TechTool
Pro, without harming any of my Macs legitimate files.

Sure you did, but TechTool has a dirty little secret, it does NOT wipe
cluster slack space.

Any previously erased files in those slack areas are still there, for
all snoops to fish around in.

We do not want to have to erase the whole damn drive, wipe it clean,
then re-install OSX just to get rid of that embarrassing slack space, do
we?



Did Google searches, could not find anything that would work on a Mac.

Windows users have a utility named KillDisk which will wipe cluster
slack space without zapping any legitimate files; we Mac users have
nothing, nada, zip, nil, zero - - - no way to protect ourselves from bad
people who want to fish around inside our clusters, looking for
previously erased data.

That should not be. Somewhere, someplace, there HAS to be a utility
similar to KillDisk, a util' that will work on a Mac running OS X.

Now I do not care a rat's ass about security, my only interest in all
this crap is to increase the compression efficiency of my backup files.

I already saved over 10GB of disk space with my half-vast work-arounds
here, plus saved ten minutes time restoring backups.

Initially, a full compressed backup file of OSX plus Vista was 23GB,
took 40 minutes to restore my entire internal drive, OSX plus Vista.

Now I have the compressed backup file down to 9.45 GB, which takes 30
minutes to restore my internal drive, OSX plus Vista.

Mark-
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: How to "wipe" ALL Mac files slack space?
    ... I now want to wipe the slack space in disk file "clusters". ... But, you protest, I wiped all the "free space" on my Mac using TechTool ... Initially, a full compressed backup file of OSX plus Vista was 23GB, ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)
  • Re: To upgrade or not to upgrade
    ... slack space caused by inefficient cluster size. ... because the drives were much smaller. ... Just plan your partitions for ...
    (rec.games.computer.ultima.dragons)
  • Re: how to list all files on drive ?
    ... slack space to conend with too! ... In these days of very big cheap drives, it's seldom worth paying much ...
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  • Re: Space on Hard Disk
    ... keep in mind that what drive manufacturers label as 40 GB drives are labeled as less by Windows. ... slack space will account for some lost space as will the Master File Table. ... When I am viewing C: drives properties it says that I have used 32 GB of space, but then when I explore C: drive and add up the folders that are in it, the amount only reaches 28 GB. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.newusers)