shred

shred [OPTIONS]

Overwrite the specified FILE(s) repeatedly, in order to make it harder for even very expensive hardware probing to recover the data.

Options

--help, -h

Print help information

--version, -V

Print version information

--force, -f

change permissions to allow writing if necessary

--iterations=<NUMBER>, -n <NUMBER>

overwrite N times instead of the default (3)

--size=<N>, -s <N>

shred this many bytes (suffixes like K, M, G accepted)

--remove, -u

truncate and remove file after overwriting; See below

--verbose, -v

show progress

--exact, -x

do not round file sizes up to the next full block; this is the default for non-regular files

--zero, -z

add a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding