CODEWITHSUNDEEP
securityfile-iofilesystems
Corvin
Corvin

Reputation: 990

Secure file deletion

Which is the best way to delete a file on a FAT32 file system securely (i.e. make it impossible to recover the file). Is overwriting the file with garbage and then deleting it secure? Could anyone suggest a good reading on this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 505

Answers (2)

Jeffrey Hantin
Jeffrey Hantin

Reputation: 36534

Overwriting in place normally works on FAT32, but you may need to watch out for intelligent media defeating you. Wear leveling on flash media and block remapping on hard drives can result in a new block being allocated to replace the old one, leaving the previous data in place.

If you trust the media not to screw you over with block remapping, then see the media sanitizing standards specified in DoD 5220.22-M.

Upvotes: 2

Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey

Reputation: 180908

You have to delete the file from the file system, and then scrub the unused, freed-up sectors.

Contrary to popular belief, simply writing the sectors with zeroes and ones once or twice will clean them beyond the capability of the vast majority of data recovery companies to retrieve the bits.

Securely Delete a File using .NET
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/SharpWipe.aspx

Secure File Shredder
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/files/NShred.aspx

Upvotes: 1

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