I see a lot of posts about how to recover deleted files. But I'm asking about how to make sure that deleted files are un-recoverable. On an HDD and/or SSD. Sometimes we end up doing a delete instead of a shred, and need to ensure that nobody can access the file if the device is stolen or lost.
This would basically follow the steps:
- Search for recoverable files.
- Overwrite them with zeroes or random bits.
Any way to do this?
Reason: It is just not practical to do a full disk/partition wipe or even a free space wipe for every time I want to get rid of a few recoverable files that I deleted instead of remembering to shred it. Even if an encrypted partition is used, the files would be recoverable by anyone who has access to the password, or can guess or brute-force the password.
TRIM
is programmed to run weekly by default. The thing is, doing a full-disk or full-partition wipe takes long...and reduces SSD life. I had enabled full-disk encryption once, but it eventually made things noticeably slower. Moreover, full-disk encryption isn't possible for a dual-boot Windows-Linux system. Finding recoverable files is already possible. We know where the file starts and ends. I hope someone implements the simple functionality of overwriting bits of such files that are found.