Sterilizing free space

[Neil Watson]

On Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 04:54:22PM -0500, Sy Ali wrote:
>I can nicely sterilize a complete drive with shred -n 2 -z -v
>/dev/<device> however I don't know how to do a partition or just the
>slack space on a drive.

Why not fill the drive with a single file and then securely erase it?

cat /dev/zero > /home/user/tmp/zerofile
wait for drive to fill
bcwipe /home/user/tmp/zerofile

Keep in mind that there is debate as to whether or not you can ever
securely erase information from a journaled file system.

-- 
Neil Watson               | Gentoo Linux
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http://watson-wilson.ca   | 2.6.11.4 AMD Athlon(tm) MP 2000+ x 2
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