Tiger Disk Utility Erase function

[RX-8]

I'm going through a training course on Tiger and I encountered a "problem" when using Disk Utility. The "Erase Free Space" feature in Disk Utility offers 3 options:

"Zero Out Deleted Files"
"7-Pass Erase of Deleted Files"
"35-Pass Erase of Deleted Files"

I decided to use the first option, which took about 20 minutes to complete. Upon completion, I almost immediately started getting a "Disk Full" message on the screen. I did a "Get Info" on the hard drive and discovered it was full! All of the erased areas were unusable or not recognized

As a fix, I re-installed Tiger with the option of keeping all of my network settings, etc., and keeping a "Previous Folder." All went well and I was back in business in about one hour.

In reviewing what happened, it seems to me that the dialog panes in Disk Utility are misleading and leads one to believe only previously deleted files are being erased. It seems that much more is actually happening.

Thoughts, comments?

RX-8

 

[slooksterpsv]

It creates a temporary file?

I'm trying it now to see what happens on my iBook... it creates a temporary file on your hard drive occupying that space, you then have to delete that file in order to get that space back. Dunno where it saves the file though.

 

[sirstaunch]

i think it will look like a plain icon called tempory with a lot of numbers after it. Search/Spotlight for tempory. The get info should say it's a massive size and not recognised by any apps.

Try the Homefolder, probably sitting in there somewhere.

I had that in Classic using an app called Burn 2.5 and lost space and found this strange file, which of course was all the deleted items stacked in one pile...