shredding files on a flash drive

[Anthony de Boer]

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> Well you could fill the device with a file (or multiple) containing all
> zeros.  That would at least fill all the free space with data which you
> could then delete.

If there's even the slightest chance you'll eventually run up against a
filesystem that does compression and can store a lot of /dev/zero in a
very small space, you could eventually get burned.  Giving it /dev/urandom
gives it something it can't effectively compress and has to write out in
detail.

-- 
Anthony de Boer
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