zerofill(1)

zerofill1

Clear unused disk space and blank devices.

Usage

zerofill [options] [devices] ...

Overview

This command is a relative of nullfile. Like nullfile, it can be used to write all unused disk space with '0', thereby making file systems that are stored on virtual machines easier to pack. In addition, zerofill can fill unused disk space with random data before zeroing, which can be useful to remove forensic trace of deleted files. Finally, zerofile can be told to operate on and zero (erase) complete disk devices.

Options

--random=count

Number of passes to use writing random data before wiping data.

--help

Outputs help screen for the user.

Releases

7 releases since Debian 7 (Wheezy); the text changed 3 times.

  1. 7
  2. 8
  3. 9–11
  4. 12–13

Author

zerofill was written by David Sugar <[email protected]>.

Reporting bugs

Report bugs to [email protected] or [email protected].

From ucommon-utils 7.0.1-0.4+b1 in Debian 13 (Trixie). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.