First off I would like to apologize if this is not the appropriate category for this question.
Using Shred as opposed to rm. When you type “info shred” it basically tells you that shred is a utility that pretty much permanently deletes the file, making it almost impossible to retrieve unless you bring it into a lab, and use extremely fancey equipment to retrieve the data. My question is this:
Is there any way to “Shred” my harddrive? It is an older computer (Laptop Toshiba m45-s265), and has been formatted a substancial amount of times (I got it used, free, not the worst laptop I’ve come across in my travels), so I know its probably covered in random garbage 1’s and 0’s all over the place. Getting ready to fire up 11.3 and would like the cleanest, freshest start as possible. Any thoughts???
Is there any way to “Shred” my harddrive? It is an older computer (Laptop Toshiba m45-s265), and has been formatted a substancial amount of times (I got it used, free, not the worst laptop I’ve come across in my travels), so I know its probably covered in random garbage 1’s and 0’s all over the place. Getting ready to fire up 11.3 and would like the cleanest, freshest start as possible. Any thoughts???
I don’t believe it’s needed, a normal read or write can not see what has previously been overwritten on a fresh partition, as far as the OS knows its a clean partition. Traces of what has been previously written to the disk is what is picked up by the special data recovery equipment you mention.
>
> Hello,
>
> First off I would like to apologize if this is not the appropriate
> category for this question.
>
> Using Shred as opposed to rm. When you type “info shred” it basically
> tells you that shred is a utility that pretty much permanently deletes
> the file, making it almost impossible to retrieve unless you bring it
> into a lab, and use extremely fancey equipment to retrieve the data.
> My question is this:
>
> Is there any way to “Shred” my harddrive? It is an older computer
> (Laptop Toshiba m45-s265), and has been formatted a substancial amount
> of times (I got it used, free, not the worst laptop I’ve come across
> in my travels), so I know its probably covered in random garbage 1’s
> and 0’s all over the place. Getting ready to fire up 11.3 and would
> like the cleanest, freshest start as possible. Any thoughts???
Don’t bother.
The only reason to do it would be because you were to discard that
hard drive and do not want anybody else to read your private data out
of it.
Shred because you are installing a new system? Waste of time and wear
on the disk
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Minas Tirith))
