When a file is deleted, its contents may still be left in the filesystem, unless explicitly overwritten with something else. The wipe
command can securely erase files, but does not seem to allow erasing free disk space not used by any files.
What should I use to achieve this?
Best Answer
Warning: Modern disk/SSD hardware and modern filesystems may squirrel away data in places where you cannot delete them, so this process may still leave data on the disk. The only safe ways of wiping data are the ATA Secure Erase command (if implemented correctly), or physical destruction. Also see How can I reliably erase all information on a hard drive?
You can use a suite of tools called secure-delete.
This has four tools:
srm
- securely delete an existing filesmem
- securely delete traces of a file from ramsfill
- wipe all the space marked as empty on your hard drivesswap
- wipe all the data from you swap space.From the man page of
srm