- #Mac disk utility partition options greyed out free#
- #Mac disk utility partition options greyed out mac#
#Mac disk utility partition options greyed out free#
However, as with the option to erase free space, it may be best to avoid this feature because the multiple writes it performs will reduce your SSD's lifetime. However, you would benefit from avoiding it.įurthermore, even if the system prevents you from using the erase free disk space feature, the Finder's Secure Erase option that overwrites deleted files with random data may still be available. Therefore, if you have a special SSD setup on your system, then the option to erase free space might still be available. Keep in mind that this only affects internal SSDs, and may only be the case for certain SSD devices (particularly those made by Apple). To avoid these problems and to keep your SSD as fresh as possible for the long term, Apple has disabled Disk Utility's secure erase option for some SSD devices. These procedure can take a little longer than both the read and the write operations themselves, and in the mean time the drive might report to the system that it no longer has any space available to store data, which can result in your system booting slowly or not being able to boot at all. On some SSD drives, once data is written the system will need to perform operations to free it. In addition, such an operation might cause your system to no longer work properly. Overall this would just wear out the SSD faster and result in a premature degradation of the drive's performance. If you were to erase the free disk space on an SSD, you would force the system to unnecessarily write not only to locations where data previously was stored, but also to fresh locations on the drive that have not yet been used. To combat this problem, SSD manufacturers implement techniques called "wear leveling," which distribute write operations through the available memory chips and extend the life of the drive by ensuring they all get used evenly. Solid-state technology has the benefit of being exceptionally fast however, the storage blocks in the NAND memory chips have a finite number of write operations that can be performed before they will no longer hold data reliably.
#Mac disk utility partition options greyed out mac#
If you find this is the case with your system, and Disk Utility only shows the Erase Free Space option as being grayed out, then it is likely the reason is because your Mac is using an SSD as its primary storage device. The option to erase free disk space might be disabled on newer Mac systems.Įven with using specialized equipment, such a procedure would only increase the slim possibility of data recovery, so using Disk Utility to erase free space does have its security benefits however, if you have purchased a new Mac system or upgraded your hard drive, then you may find Disk Utility no longer offers this as an option.
Instead, any remote possibility of data recovery would require dissection of the drive and the use of specialized equipment that can detect residual magnetism. This option makes it nearly impossible for the drive's heads to be used for reading any residual magnetism patterns and recover files. This option writes zeros to the unused portions of the drive and overwrites any previously deleted files. To prevent this from happening, one option that Apple has offered in OS X is to erase the free disk space using Disk Utility. While this offers a quick way to delete files from the drive, the data is technically still intact on disk and thereby leaves open the possibility for recovery using special software. Conventionally when files are deleted from storage device, the system only removes their entries from the file system's directory, thereby flagging blocks containing the data as being free to use. Erasing free disk space is an easy (albeit not quick) way to help prevent the recovery of files you have erased from your system.
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