This request came in at work…not as memorable as "O Captain, My
Captain" but I won’t complain too loudly…

Mac God,
Do you have any recommendation for a Hard Drive Cleaner? OS
X?

The answer was a bit complicated. I started to recommend Mireth
Software’s ShredItX, but then a clarification came…it has to be free.
There isn’t much in the free or no-cost department for hard drive free
space wipe programs on a Mac (that I know of), except what’s built-into
the OS X. So, I ended up sharing
this information. Relevant portions sans screenshots available at
link above:

To erase all free disk space, and thereby remove all traces of files
that you deleted previously using the Empty Trash feature, you should
use the Macintosh Disk Utility feature (located in the Applications
folder) to remove this space as follows:

* Open the Applications folder as you normally do.
* Click the
Utilities Folder.
* Double-click Disk Utility.
* From the
left-hand column, click the disk, volume, or image from which you want
to erase free space.
* Click the Erase tab.
* Click the Erase Free
Space button.
* Click the radio button in front of the 7-Pass Erase
of Deleted Files option.
* Click the Erase Free Space button.

If you see a system message that says you are running out of disk space,
you can ignore it. When the utility is complete, your hard drive will
have the same amount of free disk space available as before you ran the
utility.

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