Tony Nelson wrote:
At 12:41 PM -0500 7/27/05, Mike McCarty wrote:
I don't want to lose *my own data*. I'd like a version of
shred (or something like it) which will "permanently
eradicate" the data in some files. These files are
(intentionally, and with this in mind) located in a few
isolated directories (and their sub-directories).
ISTM that neither Ext3 nor Ext2 are well suited for this application. It
would be better to have a separate volume (any FS you want) that can be
entirely erased at the end of the project. As a practical matter, just
writing over the partition and swap will be good enough. If you need more
security, use an encrypting filesystem, but still erase it at the end.
[snip]
Well, I was a complete newbie to FCx, and the people I'm doing the
contract with specifically requested FCx. I installed FC2 back in
October last year, and that was that. Other than preserving my
WinXP boot (which is another story...) I more or less let the
install do its own thing. So I have one partition with all user
data on it, which is ext3.
I have since gotten an external USB drive, and put all subsequent
stuff belonging to them on it. They paid for that, and so I can
just return that. But it also has some of my stuff on it, which
I'd like to wipe. Obviously, I cannot hammer their drive. But if
I just buy an identical one, and copy either their stuff or my
stuff to it, then I'm still stuck with how to erase the data
on one of the drives.
[snip]
Using the *nix equivalent, loopback devices (man losetup), probably won't
help at all here, as the writes to the underlying file would be journalled.
There are settings to Ext3 that are supposed to control what is journalled,
but I wouldn't want to depend on them for legal matters. I have more
confidence in partition tables not moving around much.
What you're saying is that I'm probably SOL, I think.
Mike
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