Secure deletion of files in a directory

[Albert]

Am Dienstag, 15. Juni 2004 17:39 schrieb David Shaw:

Thanks David!

> On Tue, Jun 15, 2004 at 04:56:05PM +0200, Albert wrote:
> > I have to return a new hard drive in warranty and to delete a
> > lot of directories which contain private data. Unfortunately
> > the data of S.M.A.R.T are erased too, if I use badblocks -w to
> > overwrite the _whole_ drive.
> >
> > I know there is a possibility to shredder a file with gpg, but
> > not a directory. What do you recommend?
>
> GnuPG does not have a file shredder.  It is not possible to write
> such a thing to be portable to as many platforms at GnuPG runs
> on.

I use SuSE 9.1 and when I install KGPG there is an option to install 
a shredder (Reißwolf, german) and it looks like it works.

> I'd look at "shred", but keep in mind the caveats the author
> gives in the man page.

shred doesn't work with directories and has problems with ext3 and 
reiser. Any other ideas? Are you all returning your harddrives with 
files on it :-)

Albert