Wipe Free Space XFS

[mikeyosm]

Can anyone please advise the process of wiping free space (not the whole disk) on a XFS formatted array drive? Thank you.

[pwm]

Why?

 

The traditional way would be to copy /dev/zero into a new file and have that file grow until the file system is full. Then erase the file after having "normalized" all unused area.

[mikeyosm]

Just now, pwm said:

Why?

 

The traditional way would be to copy /dev/zero into a new file and have that file grow until the file system is full. Then erase the file after having "normalized" all unused area.

OK, so basically, fill the drive with a file until it reaches capacity. I would have thought there would be a tool that can format availabe space like there is in Windows.

[pwm]

3 minutes ago, mikeyosm said:

OK, so basically, fill the drive with a file until it reaches capacity. I would have thought there would be a tool that can format availabe space like there is in Windows.

There isn't much use/need for any such tool.

 

But you still haven't answered exactly what you want to accomplish. If you possibly want to play with thin provisioning of virtual disks.

[trurl]

45 minutes ago, mikeyosm said:

I would have thought there would be a tool that can format availabe space like there is in Windows.

Is there such a tool in Windows? If there is then it isn't "formatting".

 

"Format" means "write an empty filesystem to this disk". That is what it means in every operating system you have ever used, including Windows. Format doesn't really wipe anything, it just creates an empty top level directory.

 

Possibly the "tool" is doing something similar to what pwm suggested to wipe the rest of the existing filesytem.