On Aug 22, 2008, at 2:38 PM, reynt0 wrote:
On Thu, 21 Aug 2008, David Shaw wrote:
. . .
whether the filesystem you are using overwrites in place or not.
Many modern filesystems (Reiser, XFS) do not necessarily overwrite
in place. More primitive filesystems (like the FAT FS that is used
on many external disks) do overwrite in place. Linux systems most
commonly use ext3, and that may or may not overwrite in place,
depending on how it is configured. Then there is the fact that
many programs create temp files here and there which wouldn't get
shredded. On top of that there is the fact that many programs save
files in ways that can defeat shredding. Bottom line: it can be
safe, but you have
. . .
Might anyone have any quick info about this issue for MacOS?
From, say, OS10.2's HFS+, through OS10.3 and 10.4's journaled
HFS+, to whatever the current OS10.5 does if different?
OS X is an interesting case. The standard filesystem, as you note, is
HFS+ with journaling. Usually this is a danger sign for shredding as
the shred process doesn't know all the information it needs to do a
proper shredding job. However, Apple has shredding built-in to OSX,
and since both the shredder and the filesystem come from the same
people, it's at least possible that they did the necessary work to
have this shred properly (i.e. in a journal-sensitive way). Did they
actually do this? I have no idea, and would be curious to hear from
someone who does have a reference on this one way or the other. Apple
tends to be fairly stingy about this level of detail.
David
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