shrd is a modern, fast, and secure file shredding utility written in Rust. It is designed to be a performant and reliable alternative to traditional tools like GNU shred.

• Leverages multi-threading to shred multiple files concurrently, making it ideal for large directories.
• Multiple overwrite passes (default 3, configurable).
• Varied patterns including random data, fixed patterns (0xFF, 0xAA), and a final zero-out pass.
• Resetting file timestamps to the Unix epoch before deletion.
• Multiple randomized renames to obscure original filename and length.
• Synchronizes data to disk and flushes directory metadata to ensure complete removal.
• Automatically handles read-only files if the user has permission to modify them.

To build from source, you need the Rust toolchain installed.

cargo build --release

The binary will be available in target/release/shrd.

shrd [OPTIONS] <TARGET>

Shred a single file:

shrd secret.txt

Shred a directory recursively with 5 passes:

shrd -r -p 5 ./private_folder

Shred without confirmation:

shrd -y obsolete_data.db

• -p, --passes <PASSES>: Number of overwrite passes (default: 3).
• -r, --recursive: Perform a recursive shredding of directories.
• -y, --force: Skip confirmation prompt.
• -j, --jobs <JOBS>: Number of parallel jobs (default is number of CPUs).
• -h, --help: Print help.
• -V, --version: Print version.

shrd is a powerful tool, but like all shredding utilities, it may be ineffective on:

• SSDs and NVMe drives due to wear leveling and flash management.
• Copy-on-Write (COW) filesystems like Btrfs or ZFS.
• Journaled filesystems when only metadata is journaled.

In these cases, the data may remain on the physical media even after the file is "shredded."

MIT