Re: shred

[Rick Macdonald <rickmacd@home.com>]

On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Martin F. Krafft wrote:

> also sprach harsha (on Tue, 14 Aug 2001 12:10:46AM +0530):
> > There is this option of shreding of a file in KDE What exactly does it do?
> > The progress bar shows making 36 passes if I delete about 150k file. 
> 
> it most likely overwrites the file several times with alternating
> patterns of 0's and 1's at the bit level, making it impossible to
> restore it through sophisticated recoveries using ever so tiny traces
> that files can leave on disk when overwritten only once. but i am not
> sure.

Sounds like the Norton Utilities WipeInfo (WipeDisk/WipeFile). There is a
"Government Mode" that an old version of the manual (v8) says takes two
hours to wipe a 1.44 floppy. The manual says "Government Wipe executes a
government standard wipe using decimal character 246 as the last
character. You can change some parameters but if you do so it may no
longer meet government specifications".

As you say, it makes several passes so the original info cannot be lifted
with fancy techniques, whatever they may be (electron microscopes or
something).

...RickM...