Wipe Free Space on Ubuntu?

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by Hungry Man, May 20, 2012.

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  1. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Registered Member

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    Any program like CCLeaner to do this?
     
  2. moontan

    moontan Registered Member

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    Bleachbit has this option.

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

    Hungry Man Registered Member

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    I'll give bleachbit a try. Thanks.
     
  4. dw426

    dw426 Registered Member

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    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 :D 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,
     
  5. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Registered Member

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    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.
     
  6. chronomatic

    chronomatic Registered Member

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

    Code:
    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.
     
  7. mack_guy911

    mack_guy911 Registered Member

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    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 :)
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2012
  8. chronomatic

    chronomatic Registered Member

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    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.
     
  9. vasa1

    vasa1 Registered Member

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

    Ocky Registered Member

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    Don't worry, after a few drinks I understand everything you said. :D
     
  11. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Registered Member

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    Yes, it's to prevent data recovery.

    Thanks.

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

    BrandiCandi Guest

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