Shredding an external HDD How do I shred the data on an external HDD? I am trying `shred "/media/me/New Volume/"` but I get `failed to open for writing: Is a directory`. Why?

You need to run `shred` on the device, not on the mount point.

Type `mount` and get the device name (e.g. `/dev/sdb1`, likely it will be `/dev/sdXY` where X is a letter and Y is a number), then unmount it (run `umount /your/device`) and run `shred /your/device`.