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Weblog:   Please, For the Love of All That's Recoverable, Shred Your Hard Drive!
Subject:   Random or preset?
Date:   2005-03-04 04:22:25
From:   blackhole
This is second place I have seen the assertion the
shred uses random data. The shred info page in my RH 7.0 system makes it sound like particular (non-random) patterns are used. Such as this description of the -n option:


By default, `shred' uses 25 passes of overwrite. This is enough for all of the useful overwrite patterns to be used at least once. You can reduce this to save time, or increase it if you have a lot of time to waste.


Can you account for this discrepancy. Did the functioning of shred change?
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  • Kyle Rankin photo Random or preset?
    2005-03-04 09:08:31  Kyle Rankin | O'Reilly Author [View]

    You seem to be correct. That seems to indicate that the patterns aren't exactly random (not that the man or info pages go into detail on what type of patterns it uses, I imagine we'd have to look at the source). Of course, it's altogether possible that at least some of the patterns are in fact random.
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