Wipe Free Space on Ubuntu?

[Hungry Man]

Any program like CCLeaner to do this?

[moontan]

Bleachbit has this option.

it will warn you it's very slow, if i recall.

[Hungry Man]

I'll give bleachbit a try. Thanks.

[dw426]

There was time when I believed Linux didn't have these sorts of issues, that things cleanly were removed. Boy was I quickly proven wrong But yeah, Bleachbit is there for you, and I never really noticed it being too slow..though admittedly I get up and do other things during such tasks,

[Hungry Man]

27 minutes to wipe my 280GB Ubuntu partition. Not bad. Surprisingly fast actually... when I wiped my entire Windows 8 partitions free space (400GB) with CCleaner it took over 2 hours. More like 3.

[chronomatic]

Originally Posted by Hungry Man

Any program like CCLeaner to do this?

You don't need any program. All you need is the terminal and dd.

dd if=/dev/zero of=wipe_file

Let it run until it stops. Then delete "wipe_file." When you get low on disk space, you will get warnings, just ignore them. This means wiping is almost finished. If you don't want to use zeros, then change it to /dev/urandom.

NOTE: You will have to do this for each partition. Just use fdisk to see how many partitions you have. But most of the time /home is all that matters.

I never worry about wiping because I use whole disk encryption. I recommend it.

[mack_guy911]

edit: my apologies i talk like drunk

please use bleachbit carefully

i use it only for cleaning browser cache ..... flash.........etc........safe things never mess with system files including temp that i mean to say

[chronomatic]

Originally Posted by mack_guy911

please dont use bleachbit safely dont use root and in usermode also use safeway i use for browsers flash never used on temp they cause problem if you clean temp cache

Wow, sorry but I didn't understand a word of this. Might be easier to type it in your native language and let people use google translate.

[vasa1]

Why does one "wipe free space"? Is it primarily to protect against others recovering data from the system? Or are there other advantages?

[Ocky]

Originally Posted by mack_guy911

edit: my apologies i talk like drunk

please use bleachbit carefully

i use it only for cleaning browser cache ..... flash.........etc........safe things never mess with system files including temp that i mean to say

Don't worry, after a few drinks I understand everything you said.

[Hungry Man]

Originally Posted by vasa1

Why does one "wipe free space"? Is it primarily to protect against others recovering data from the system? Or are there other advantages?

Yes, it's to prevent data recovery.

Let it run until it stops. Then delete "wipe_file." When you get low on disk space, you will get warnings, just ignore them. This means wiping is almost finished. If you don't want to use zeros, then change it to /dev/urandom.

NOTE: You will have to do this for each partition. Just use fdisk to see how many partitions you have. But most of the time /home is all that matters.

I never worry about wiping because I use whole disk encryption. I recommend it.

Thanks.

Not sure if I'm going to encrypt the full disk yet.

Originally Posted by chronomatic

You don't need any program. All you need is the terminal and dd.

dd if=/dev/zero of=wipe_file

Let it run until it stops. Then delete "wipe_file." When you get low on disk space, you will get warnings, just ignore them. This means wiping is almost finished. If you don't want to use zeros, then change it to /dev/urandom.

NOTE: You will have to do this for each partition. Just use fdisk to see how many partitions you have. But most of the time /home is all that matters.

I never worry about wiping because I use whole disk encryption. I recommend it.

+1, I was going to suggest it as soon as I saw the thread, but chronomatic beat me to it.