[[!meta title="Securely deleting files"]]

Tails previously included tools to *wipe* files and available disk space. We removed these tools from Tails 6.0 (February 2024), because we think that they are not reliable enough on modern storage devices, such as USB sticks and Solid-State Drives (SSDs).

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<h1 id="risks">Limitations of file deletion</h1>

See also [[!wikipedia Data_erasure desc="Wikipedia: Data Erasure"]].

<h2 id="delete">Deleting a file does not erase its content</h2>

Instead, operating systems only mark the space that was used by the deleted file as available for future files, because it is much faster to do. However, the content of the deleted file remains on the device until the operating system reuses the space for another file.

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When all the data on your device is encrypted, data recovery tools can only recover encrypted data that is useless without your passphrase.

To better protect deleted files from data recovery, you can reformat your device and create another encryption with a different passphrase.

For compatibility with Tails only or with another Linux, use [[LUKS encrypted volumes|encrypted_volumes]].

For compatibility with Windows or macOS, use [[VeraCrypt encrypted volumes|veracrypt]].

<p>Take into account that you could be forced or tricked to give out your
passphrase.</p>

To better protect deleted files from data recovery, you can also reformat and overwrite the entire device with zeroes.

Even if some data could still be recovered from [[spare memory cells|secure_deletion#spare]], overwriting the entire device is especially important if the device is not encrypted.

To do so:

Open the *Disks* utility.

All the current storage devices are listed in the left pane.

Plug in the device that you want to reformat and overwrite.