ok, thx, mounting as ext2 might be a step forward that i hadn't thought of yet, however, i still don't quite understand it. Please correct me where i go wrong: 1. The sensitive information is in the MFT and the Journal file on disk, as well as in the actual file. After creating the files, damage is done. 2. shred wipes the data on disk where the file was stored, but it doesn't wipe the MFT nor the Journal 3. mounting as ext2 would help against further contaminating the journal with more sensitive data, which might happen if the shred oparation would cause the creation of journal entries such as: overwrite "sensitive filename" with "my random data" ... what am i missing?