HDD GURU FORUMS

Hello,
I wiped a flash drive with "dd" command and a recovery program like "RStudio" can list files, but can't recover them. How can I remove the file names too? I don't like recovery programs can list the removed files.

Thank you.

If rstudio can list the files either you used the dd command incorrectly/are pointing r-studio to a different device (most likely) or the device you wiped is returning "ok, I wrote the data" when in fact it didn't (possible but less likely)

I did:

Code:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdax/file.dd


Anything wrong?

Indeed you made a mistake, when you dd to a file rather than the whole device you are only wiping unallocated space, the table that stores filenames and locations operates the same as a database - it doesnt shrink when records are deleted, those records are marked as free and are reused when new files are written. If you want to make sure even the metadata is deleted you need to copy off all the files you need from the flash drive, dd over the whole drive, reformat it, and copy the files you need back.

Yes, I want to wiping the free space.
When I used a tool like "Eraser" for wiping the free space then it destroy file names too.