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ntfswipe - overwrite unused space on an NTFS volume

Authors

ntfswipe  was written by Richard Russon, Anton Altaparmakov and Yura Pakhuchiy.  It was ported to ntfs-3g
       by Erik Larsson.

Availability

ntfswipe is part of the ntfs-3g package and is available from:
       https://github.com/tuxera/ntfs-3g/wiki/

Bugs

       There are no known problems with ntfswipe.  If you find a bug please send an email describing the problem
       to the development team:
       ntfs-3g-devel@lists.sf.net

Description

ntfswipe clears all or part of unused space on an NTFS volume by overwriting with zeroes or random bytes.

Examples

       Wipe out all unused space in an NTFS volume.

              ntfswipe-a/dev/sda1

       Wipe out all deleted file names from an NTFS volume.

              ntfswipe-dms/dev/sda1

Name

       ntfswipe - overwrite unused space on an NTFS volume

Options

       Below  is  a  summary  of  all the options that ntfswipe accepts.  Nearly all options have two equivalent
       names.  The short name is preceded by - and the long name is preceded by --.  Any single letter  options,
       that  don't  take  an  argument, can be combined into a single command, e.g.  -fv is equivalent to -f-v.
       Long named options can be abbreviated to any unique prefix of their name.

       -a, --all
              Wipe all unused space. This may take significant time. If the option --unused-fast (or -U) is also
              present, the faster wiping method is used.

       -b, --bytes BYTE-LIST
              Define the allowed replacement bytes which are drawn randomly to overwrite the unused space. BYTE-
              LIST is a comma-separated list of values in range 0-255 expressed in octal, decimal or hexadecimal
              base.

       -c, --count NUM
              Define the number of times the unused space is to be overwritten.  If  both  options  --bytes  and
              --count are set, the space is repeatedly overwritten this number of times by each of the values in
              the list.

       -d, --directory
              Wipe all the directory indexes, which may contain names of deleted files.

       -f, --force
              This  will  override  some sensible defaults, such as not using a mounted volume.  Use this option
              with caution.

       -h, --help
              Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.

       -i, --info
              Display details about unused space, without wiping anything.

       -l, --logfile
              Overwrite the logfile (update journal).

       -m, --mft
              Overwrite the unused space in the MFT (main file table, which contains the  file  names,  and  the
              contents of short files).

       -n, --no-action
              Executes the wiping process without writing to device.

       -p, --pagefile
              Overwrite the Windows swap space.

       -q, --quiet
              Suppress some debug/warning/error messages.

       -s, --undel
              Overwrite  the  space  which  had  been allocated to a file which has been deleted recently and is
              still undeletable. This option is not compatible with --bytes and the replacement bytes are random
              ones or taken from a standard list.

       -t, --tails
              Overwrite the space at the end of files which is unused, but allocated because the allocations are
              always done by full clusters.

       -u, --unused
              Overwrite the space which is currently not allocated to any file (but may have been  used  in  the
              past).

       -U, --unused-fast
              Overwrite  the  space  which  is  currently not allocated to any file, trying not to overwrite the
              space not written to since the previous wiping.

       -v, --verbose
              Display more debug/warning/error messages. This option may be used  twice  to  display  even  more
              messages.

       -V, --version
              Show the version number, copyright and license of ntfswipe.

See Also

ntfs-3g(8), ntfsls(8), ntfsprogs(8)

ntfs-3g 2022.10.3                                   June 2014                                        NTFSWIPE(8)

Synopsis

ntfswipe [options] device

See Also