Re: shred bug? [was: Unidentified subject!]

[debian-user@howorth.org.uk]

Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:

> Shred will determine the size of the file, then write data to the
> file, rewind, write data again, etc.  On a traditional hard drive,
> that will overwrite the original private information.  On modern
> devices, it may not.

Thanks for the excellent explanation :)

One nitpick. You say "On a traditional hard drive, that will overwrite
the original private information" but that's not quite true. It also
needs to be a "traditional" file system! That is, not journalled or COW.

So nowadays I would expect shred not to work unless you got very
lucky, or planned carefully.