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I installed Bleachbit (downloaded from official Ubuntu Software store) and I started free space wipe but when it ended all my free space was filled (0 bytes remain) so I reinstalled Ubuntu and now I want to wipe free space but I'm afraid that the same will happen again.

Can someone explain to me how to avoid this?

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  • 1
    What is your ubuntu version? is it important to use bleachbit? Is it okay for you to use another program?
    – Ravexina
    Apr 13, 2017 at 9:06
  • latest ubuntu version 16.04, no its not important bleachbit if you have a better program to suggest tell me !
    – George
    Apr 13, 2017 at 9:08

4 Answers 4

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I'm not sure which version of bleachbit is ok, however as you said it's ok for you to use another program, I'm going to suggest another cool small utility for this purpose.

To wipe free space I recommend sfill program from secure-delete package.

Installation:

sudo apt install secure-delete

It's got a bunch of cool stuff:

$ dpkg -L secure-delete | grep -i /bin/

/usr/bin/sswap
/usr/bin/sdmem
/usr/bin/sfill
/usr/bin/srm

sfill is for wiping free space, usage:

sudo sfill /

It will write the whole disk 38 times. you can use switches like -f to make this process a little bit faster. or for each -l it will decrease the number of writes.

For example

sudo sfill -fll /

Wipes the whole disk one times and fast.

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  • oh nice thank you...its safe to use right? ***I have two partiotions (dual boot windows 7 and ubuntu)
    – George
    Apr 13, 2017 at 9:15
  • I updated my post, As I know the sfill is safe, but I'm not aware of it's efficiency on NTFS formated partitions. however it should be okay.
    – Ravexina
    Apr 13, 2017 at 9:18
  • i will try it and i will update you if worked well :D
    – George
    Apr 13, 2017 at 9:20
  • It worked fine man!!!
    – George
    Apr 13, 2017 at 13:07
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There are two parts to this.

Prevention Even though the process can take a while (sometimes hours), do not abort BleachBit while it is wiping free space.

Restoration If you do interrupt it while it is working, in recent versions of BleachBit with default settings on a typical system you can easily restore all the free space by cleaning System - Cache. This works very quickly, especially if you turn off the option "overwrite files to hide contents." The system will soon be back to normal without the need to reinstall the operating system.

sfill Ravexina suggested the tool sfill that, by default, overwrites the unused disk space 38 times. This can be extremely slow, and the "need" for this is based on gross misunderstanding of how modern hard drives works. There is no credible evidence that any information wiped a single time can be recovered from a modern hard drive. See the Documentation Shred Files and Wipe Disks for more information.

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  • thank you man sfill worked fine and fast with sfill -fll /
    – George
    Apr 13, 2017 at 15:05
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I use dd on all my distros:

sudo dd status=progress if=/dev/zero of=delete.this; sync; rm delete.this; sync
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  • secure delete worked fine for me. Thanks for your tip
    – George
    Apr 13, 2017 at 13:08
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Bleachbit does a good job but just like many other linux apps - its unpredictable. What will it do to your system only God knows.

Anyways, there is a quick fix for this. Bleachbit actually creates a mammoth size hidden file during this stupid 'free disk space' option and is supposed to delete this after completion of the task. But it doesnt. And then you feel like kicking the developer's asses.

Do the following procedures- 1. Find this hidden file using the command 'ls -al' 2. Next scroll down and search this file. Note its location. For me it was in the home folder. 3. next delete this file using rm or sudo rm. 4. run a df command to confirm.

  1. And lastly make a promise to yourself never to use this stupid option or Bleachbit ever again.
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  • BleachBit is not unpredictable, it does exactly what you ask of it .. it might be you don't understand it, or didn't read the manual-page.
    – Soren A
    Dec 18, 2017 at 9:05

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