Shredding vs overwrite

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Hello. I am just curious to know what the difference between shredding a file and overwriting a file. From my understanding, they both make files unrecoverable.

Also, which would be better to do, overwrite a file or shred a file?

I use the terms interchangeably. The documentation explains the effectiveness, and I will add a note about the terms.

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Andrew, lead developer

ROCKNROLLKID's picture

Thanks for the link and I read through it, but one question still remains

Which is better, to shred or to overwrite? Or are they something that can't be compared/are the same thing?

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Also known as Alex.

Moderator for BleachBit and a maintainer for Winapp2.

Check out my open-source group on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/opencommunity

Windows 10 x64 (switching to ReactOS in the future).

Without extra explanation or qualification, they are the same thing.

Overwrite could imply a simple pass with zeros, while shredding could imply something more complicated.

As the documentation explains, multiple passes are not more effective, but in some cases it may matter what is done as the last pass. Two benefits of using zeros over a random pattern are: zeros are faster, and they compresses better (like when archiving the disk of a virtual machine).

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Andrew, lead developer