Need a free-space disk wiper

[JackRock]

I'm looking for a good free-space wiper that can do simple wipes, as well as DoD-level wipes. A component of [url=http://www.auslogics.com/en/]Auslogics' BoostSpeed had this, but they don't have a linux-compatible version. I suppose I could try with Wine, but I prefer not to.

The trick is to wipe the free space, but not the current data.

Any suggestions?

[falconindy]

Write zeroes to a file on the disk until it fills up, then delete that file:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/path/to/file.of.zeroes bs=1m

Note that most methods of "wiping" are mostly ineffective on journaling file systems.

[steve161]

secure-delete. It is in the repos.

[JackRock]

secure-delete. It is in the repos.

We have a winner! That worked beautifully. It created a file called "oooooooo.ooo" in the /root/ directory, which suddenly was over 300+ gb. But I restarted, and it went away. I imagine that's how it did the wipe - create a large worthless and unreadable file.

[sliketymo]

Dosn't BleachBit clean free space ?

[JackRock]

Dosn't BleachBit clean free space ?

Not that the description notes. It seems specifically to delete existing files more "securely". What I wanted was a way to wipe out free space that's not being taken care of by "current" files.

BleachBit seems to take a "current" file and make it into free space.

[falconindy]

We have a winner! That worked beautifully. It created a file called "oooooooo.ooo" in the /root/ directory, which suddenly was over 300+ gb. But I restarted, and it went away. I imagine that's how it did the wipe - create a large worthless and unreadable file.

I suggest you read the following before you assume that any type of "secure delete" utility will provide the results you're looking for:

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/un...ure-erase.html

In particular, the following snippet:

One major problem with all of these utilities is that most modern file systems use techniques called "journaling" or "logging" to help prevent file system corruption. Unfortunately, these techniques can also make it nearly impossible to ensure that all traces of a file's data get overwritten unless you are willing to completely wipe out all data on the disk. Operating system buffers, hardware caches, "bad block" lists and file system corruption (e.g., orphaned inodes which are neither in a file nor in the disk's free space) can also interfere with the proper operation of these utilities.

Bottom line: if you want to be able to use a secure delete utility, you'll need a filesystem like ext2 which doesn't use a journal.

[JackRock]

Frankly, I'm okay with that. I'm not trying to hide top secret data or anything. So as long as it makes it a bit more of a pain for any thieves to retrieve stolen data, I'm good.

Eventually, I'll get another SATA HDD to replace the IDE secondary I have, and then I'll do a complete clean install on the next Ubuntu release, and then swap/format/swap.

[steve161]

Bleachbit does have an option to wipe free space with a one pass zero wipe. I think it is under 'system'.

[sliketymo]

Right.Run it 3 times.