Secure erase (obliterate) data? (and/or selective encryption)


johmei

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So first off, an apology.  I searched and found no information that seemed very definitive or helpful, and this is a bit of an emergency, so please forgive me.

 

I need to completely obliterate certain files for security reasons and I have no idea how this is possible.  I had one idea; after deleting said files,  copy a massive file over and over until there is no free space left, and then copy a bunch of smaller files to get the last bit and then delete them all, theoretically replacing any of the sensitive files with something else.  But I am not confident in this procedure as there are too many variables that I am not immediately aware of.

 

So will that work at all?  And if not, is there ANY way at all to secure erase select files, or even better, a way to write 0s to every single sector that is not in use, or even random patterns.

 

And finally, is there any way to encrypt data, either selectively, or the entire array?  This would make the secure erase option unnecessary if I understand encryption properly.

 

So really, either or, I just need to somehow, completely destroy the sensitive files.

 

Again, I apologize if this is in the wrong category, if it's been covered, if it's in the wiki.  I did search and wasn't able to find a crystal clear answer, just some discussion on the topic and I'm kind of in a panic for a solution.

 

Thank you very much for your time!

Edited by johmei
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18 hours ago, Benson said:

"shred" was simple and efficiency, below are some info. and it's drawback.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shred_(Unix)

http://freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/shred_and_secure_delete_tools_wiping_files_partitions_and_disks_gnu_linux/

 

 

For encryption disk volume, UnRAID beta version rc9f have such feature, you may have try.

 

 

 

 

Thank you very much for the information!  I'll look into both of them!  Very happy to see that unRAID is going to be offering encryption in the future too!

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