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How to wipe free disk space in Linux?

Fresh5 days ago
Mar 15, 2026356638 views
Confidence Score1%
1%

Problem

When a file is deleted, its contents may still be left in the filesystem, unless explicitly overwritten with something else. The command can securely erase files, but does not seem to allow erasing free disk space not used by any files. What should I use to achieve this?

Error Output

wipe

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Fix for: How to wipe free disk space in Linux?

Low Risk

Warning: Modern disk/SSD hardware and modern filesystems may squirrel away data in places where you cannot delete them, so this process may still leave data on the disk. The only safe ways of wiping data are the ATA Secure Erase command (if implemented correctly), or physical destruction. Also see How can I reliably erase all information on a hard drive? You can use a suite of tools called secure-delete. This has four tools: - securely delete an existing file - securely delete traces of a file …

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