By securely deleting files or entire hard drives, your data will be gone for good.
Note: Modern hard drives are extremely sophisticated, as are the experts who recover data for a living.
As an example, we’ve got a file called BankInfo.txt on a Windows NTFS-formatted hard drive.
A quick look at the contents of BankInfo.txt make it obvious that the file has indeed been securely overwritten.
We can use some command-line arguments to makeshreddelete the file from the hard drive as well.
We can also be extra-careful about the shredding process by upping the number of timesshredoverwrites the original file.
We’ll use the programwipeto securely delete all of the data on a hard drive.
Unlikeshred,wipeis not included in Ubuntu by default, so we have to install it.
wipeis part of the Universe repository, which is not enabled by default.
We’ll enable it by clicking on parameters > Repositories in the Synaptic Package Manager window.
Check the checkbox next to “Community-maintained Open Source software (universe)”.
You’ll need to reload Synaptic’s package list.
press the Reload button in the main Synaptic Package Manager window.
Thewipepackage should come up, along with some other packages that perform similar functions.
choose the checkbox to the left of the label “wipe” and select “Mark for Installation”.
grab the Apply button to start the installation process.
smack the Apply button on the Summary window that pops up.
Once the installation is done, tap the Close button and end the Synaptic Package Manager window.
Open a terminal window by clicking on Applications in the top-left of the screen, then Accessories > Terminal.
A few factors will help you identify the right hard drive.
We make a note of the label found under the the rig column heading.
Thewipedevelopers recommend wiping each partition separately.
Your hard drive will be completely wiped.
