[Nottingham] Secure deletion of files

[Michael Simms]

If you dont mind losing the partition contents, or can copy them to
another partition (which will only copy actual files not deleted ones)
you can dd the disc partition from /dev/zero or /dev/random to blank it
completely (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdb1 for example).
If its your boot partition, its harder, but google may tell you some
tool that may exist to do it.


On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 17:59 +0100, David Aldred wrote:
> A question arising from a discussion at work: how secure is deletion of files 
> in Linux?  
> 
> Specifically, if I'm working on something for my employer using my own PC, and 
> need it completely deleted and irrecoverable afterwards, can I do that?
> 
> And is there any way of doing it retrospectively, if I were to forget at the 
> time and simply delete the file in the usual way?
> 
> (The video about security which triggered the discussion suggested a way of 
> securely deleting your files under Windows, which would be better than 
> nothing but still not particularly secure - and illustrated it with a video 
> of someone working on a Mac!).
> 
-- 
Michael Simms - CEO, Linux Game Publishing
http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com