On Wed, March 7, 2007 09:52, Roger Munford wrote:
> If I had a file whose contents I wanted to remove completely from the
> disk, would it be enough to open it and use Fwrite() to overwrite each
> character and then delete?
Use srm. This does much the same, though does it 30+ times,
with a mixture of random data, zeroes and special values to
try and really make sure the data is gone. It also randomises
the name of the file before actually removing it, so the
filename can't be recovered.
It has options for 'less secure' deletion modes as well if
you want it done quickly.
On Gentoo, it's part of the secure-delete package, and
includes similar tools such as sfill which does the
same to a complete partition.
See:
www.thc.org
If you're *really* worried about security, I'd suggest
melting down the complete hard drive. It's the only way to
be sure :-)
--
Be seeing you, Web: www.glendale.org.uk
Sam. IM: samuel.penn@???
