Journaling filesystems (such as Ext3 or ReiserFS) are now being used by
       default  by  most Linux distributions.  No secure deletion program that
       does filesystem-level calls can sanitize  files  on  such  filesystems,
       because  sensitive  data  and  metadata  can be written to the journal,
       which cannot be readily accessed.  Per-file secure deletion  is  better
       implemented in the operating system.

       Encrypting  a  whole  partition  with cryptoloop, for example, does not
       help very much either, since there is a single key for all  the  parti‐
       tion.

       Therefore  wipe is best used to sanitize a harddisk before giving it to
       untrusted parties (i.e. sending your laptop for repair, or selling your
       disk).   Wiping  size issues have been hopefully fixed (I apologize for
       the long delay).