nwipe(1) - Linux man page

Name

nwipe - securely erase disks

Synopsis

nwipe [options]

Description

nwipe is a command that will securely erase disks using a variety of recognised methods. It is a fork of the dwipe command used by Darik's Boot and Nuke (dban). nwipe is included with partedmagic if want a quick and easy bootable CD version. nwipe was created out of a need to run the DBAN dwipe command outside of DBAN, in order to allow its use with any host distribution, thus giving better hardware support. It is essentially the same as dwipe, with a few changes:

- pthreads is used instead of fork
- The parted library is used to detect drives
- The code is designed to be compiled with gcc

Options

-V, --version: Prints the version number
-h, --help: Prints a help summary
--autonuke: Select all devices and start wiping immediately
--sync: Open devices in sync mode
--verify=TYPE: Whether to perform verification of erasure (default: last) off - Do not verify last - Verify after the last pass all - Verify every pass
-m, --method=METHOD: The wiping method (default: dodshort).
dod522022m / dod - 7 pass DOD 5220.22-M method
dodshort / dod3pass - 3 pass DOD method
gutmann - Peter Gutmann's Algorithm
ops2 - RCMP TSSIT OPS-II
random / prng / stream - PRNG Stream
zero / quick - Overwrite with zeros
-l, --logfile=FILE: Filename to log to. Default is STDOUT
-p, --prng=METHOD: PRNG option (mersenne|twister|isaac)
-r, --rounds=NUM: Number of times to wipe the device using the selected method (default: 1)

Bugs

Please see the sourceforge site for the latest list (http://nwipe.sourceforge.net)

Author

Nwipe was released by Andy Beverley <andy@andybev.com> as modified version of dwipe from DBAN by Darik Horn <dajhorn-dban@vanadac.com>.