Linux.com

What is Linux?

Feeds

Special Offers

Re:Try shred

Posted by: Anonymous Coward on September 29, 2005 08:46 PM

Shred use to be OK but, shred is no longer reliable for permanently wiping a disk. From the shred man page:

The following are examples of file

systems on which shred is not effective:

* log-structured or journaled file systems, such as those supplied with

AIX and Solaris (and JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, Ext3, etc.)

* file systems that write redundant data and carry on even if some writes

fail, such as RAID-based file systems

* file systems that make snapshots, such as Network Appliance's NFS server

* file systems that cache in temporary locations, such as NFS

version 3 clients

* compressed file systems

In addition, file system backups and remote mirrors may contain copies of the file that

cannot be removed, and that will allow a shredded file to be recovered later

Return to Darik's Boot and Nuke: A great tool for obliterating your data