On Feb 3, 2017, at 11:57 AM, John Robinson <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

> Wish I knew what you were talking about

Nothing deep going on here. It’s just a discussion about how to really make 
sure nobody can recover file deleted from a hard drive.

“rm filename” is the standard terminal command to remove a file using the 
terminal. All it does is remove the file from the hard drive’s directory while 
leaving the file’s data on the drive. Clever software can sometimes still find 
the file’s data. This is roughly the same as removing a card from the library’s 
card catalog without taking the book off the shelf.

“srm filename” removes the file from the drive’s directory and overwrites the 
data on the hard drive once so the file's contents can’t be recovered. This 
takes the card from the library’s catalog and the book from the shelf.

“rm -P filename” is an option to the standard terminal deletion command that 
removes the file from the disk’s directory and overwrites the previous data 
three times with 0s and 1s. This is like removing the card from the library’s 
catalog, burning the book and then scattering the ashes.

The problem pointed out by R. D. Preston is the srm command used to be 
available in the terminal of macOS, but disappeared in Sierra. The rm command 
is still there.

L^2






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