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sam islam
Asked: 2019-11-26 11:58:17 +0800 CST

How to delete a file from an external disk without moving the file from the external disk to the local disk?

  • 772

As you know there are multiple ways of recovering the files even after it was deleted. I have a USB 8GB pen, it contains many files, one of them I would like to delete it. if I clicked on move to the trash, of course, it's going to move the file from the external pen drive to the local storage. and I don't want that.

delete secure-erase

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    When you delete a file on an USB drive, it is not moved to your local disk even if it shows in the trash. It is in an invisible folder on the USB drive (usually named .Trash-1000)

    To immediately delete a file without using the trash, hold the SHIFT key and press DEL or send it to the trash and empty it.

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  2. I think you actually want to remove the file securely so as to make it very hard to recover the data.

    Here is the command:

    shred -u path/to/file

    Just to make it unreadable:

    shred path/to/file
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