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NTFSWIPE(8) System Manager's Manual NTFSWIPE(8)

NAME

ntfswipe - overwrite unused space on an NTFS volume

SYNOPSIS

ntfswipe [options] device

DESCRIPTION

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

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.

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.
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.
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.
Wipe all the directory indexes, which may contain names of deleted files.
This will override some sensible defaults, such as not using a mounted volume. Use this option with caution.
Show a list of options with a brief description of each one.
Display details about unused space, without wiping anything.
Overwrite the logfile (update journal).
Overwrite the unused space in the MFT (main file table, which contains the file names, and the contents of short files).
Executes the wiping process without writing to device.
Overwrite the Windows swap space.
Suppress some debug/warning/error messages.
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.
Overwrite the space at the end of files which is unused, but allocated because the allocations are always done by full clusters.
Overwrite the space which is currently not allocated to any file (but may have been used in the past).
Overwrite the space which is currently not allocated to any file, trying not to overwrite the space not written to since the previous wiping.
Display more debug/warning/error messages. This option may be used twice to display even more messages.
Show the version number, copyright and license of ntfswipe.

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

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

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/

SEE ALSO

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

June 2014 ntfs-3g 2022.10.3