This page provides explanation of all the CLI mode commands Secure Delete supports.

Using Secure Delete with the -h or -? switches will bring up the following help dialog.

SDEL v2.0 : Java Secure Deletion . Copyright 1998 Ben Jones.
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USAGE: (java) sdel -option -option filename filename ...
OPTIONS:
-p Prompt for every file action.
-n Don't prompt for any actions.
-? Displays this help text.
-c drive Clears free space on this drive.
-o# Alter the number of times to overwrite.
-b# Add a padding in bytes to every overwrite.
-r Turns on directory recursion.
-s Uses sequential data instead of pseudo-random.
For more information see the HTML documentation.
Run without CLI options to launch the GUI.

Commands

-p
Prompting On
This option turns on prompting for every file action - you will be asked individually for each file or directory to delete and for each disk clear.

-n
No Prompting
With this option enabled Secure Delete will not output anything to the CLI but all file operations will be done as usual. Note that all file actions will be carried out as though you answered 'yes' to the prompts, so be careful as you can delete a lot of files without warning using this command.

-?
Display Help
If you use this option in a command line, all other commands are disregarded and the help file is displayed. -h is also a valid option to display the help, and it will also be displayed if the CLI options cannot be parsed.

-c drive
Disk Clear
Use this option to clear all the free space on a drive. After the -c leave a space then type your drive path and this drive will be cleared. You can run multiple drive clears by repeating the -c drive switch.
Example: sdel -c c: -c d: -c e:

-o#
Adjust Overwrite Amount
This option allows you to adjust how many times a file is overwritten before being deleted. Once is the minimum and also the default - the more times the file is written over the slower the whole process is. Once the file has been overwritten once it is in effect unrecoverable, however on certain filesystems this option may be useful.

Simply type the number of times you wish to overwrite each file directly after the -o switch ( do not leave a space ).

Note that the disk clear operation only ever overwrites once regardless of this setting - the operation time could become unmanagable otherwise.
Example: sdel -o5 data.txt

-b#
Adjust Byte Padding
This option allows you to give each overwrite of a file to be deleted a padding amount in bytes. The padding is added to the file size so that a larger file size than original is actually overwritten. This option will only be of use on certain filesystems.

Type the number of bytes you wish to add to each file directly after the -b switch ( do not leave a space ).
Example: sdel -b1024 data.txt

-r
Directory Recursion
To turn on directory recursion simply use this option in your command line. Any directories which are encountered will be entered and have their files added to the files to delete according to the current pattern.

-s
Sequential Output
This option changes the data used to overwrite files from pseudo-random data to sequential data - on slower computers you may notice a significant speed increase when using this option, and unless you are using a file system with any sort of compression this option will not affect the safety of the deleted files.

Dont use this option on filesystems with any compression - it will not delete your files as safely as they should be deleted. Use pseudo-random data instead ( which is the default ).

Shareware

The shareware version of Secure Delete only supports the -p and -n prompting options, as well as the help option.

Why not upgrade to the full version for extra power and capabilities? See the order page to purchase Secure Delete.