shred

If you have ever wondered how to remove your personal data from old computers before selling them or throwing them away, shred is included in most linux distributions and does a nice enough job.
  1. Boot using your favorite linux. Ubuntu Knoppix Debian
  2. If you have multiple disks, check twice:  fdisk -l
  3. Stop using the disk: umount /dev/sdi1
  4. Read the caution (below) and in the man page: man shred
  5. Shred it only one time, and fill with zeros: shred -n1 -v -z /dev/sdi
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# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdi: 10.2 GB, 10248118272 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1245 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9da19da1

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdi1   *           1        1244     9992398+   7  HPFS/NTFS


Write one pass of random data to the entire disk, then erase it by writing zeros:
shred -n1 -v -z /dev/sdi


The same thing works on individual files:  
# shred -n9 -v -z Junk.txt
shred: Junk.txt: pass 1/10 (random)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 2/10 (555555)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 3/10 (000000)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 4/10 (6db6db)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 5/10 (random)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 6/10 (ffffff)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 7/10 (492492)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 8/10 (aaaaaa)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 9/10 (random)...
shred: Junk.txt: pass 10/10 (000000)...




CAUTION: Note that shred relies on a very  important  assumption:  that
the  file system overwrites data in place.  This is the traditional way
to do things, but many modern file system designs do not  satisfy  this
assumption.   The following are examples of file systems on which shred
is not effective, or is not guaranteed to  be  effective  in  all  file
system modes:

* log-structured or journaled file systems, such as those supplied with
AIX and Solaris (and JFS, ReiserFS, XFS, Ext3, etc.)

* file systems that write redundant data and  carry  on  even  if  some
writes fail, such as RAID-based file systems

*  file  systems  that  make snapshots, such as Network Appliance's NFS
server

* file systems that cache in temporary locations, such as NFS version 3
clients

* compressed file systems

In  the  case  of  ext3 file systems, the above disclaimer applies (and
shred is thus of limited  effectiveness)  only  in  data=journal  mode,
which  journals  file  data  in addition to just metadata.  In both the
data=ordered (default) and data=writeback modes, shred works as  usual.
Ext3  journaling  modes  can  be  changed  by adding the data=something
option to the mount  options  for  a  particular  file  system  in  the
/etc/fstab file, as documented in the mount man page (man mount).

In  addition, file system backups and remote mirrors may contain copies
of the file that cannot be removed, and that will allow a shredded file
to be recovered later.

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