Hi Monty!
What desktop are you running in VL? I know you've mentioned it in other threads seems so but I've since forgotten, sorry. If you were running the KDE desktop and managed to install
Krusader, which is an awesome dual-pane file manage leagues beyond XFE (yet I still prefer XFE myself), highlighting and right-clicking a file in there gives the option to "shred" the file. Now whether or not it does full-blown directories as well I can't recall ATM---I'd have to go boot into my other distro which has KDE to see.
Hmm... come to think of it? If you're running VL and have just the default XFCE desktop? If it's the version containing
K3b in it for burning CDs/DVDs then chances are very high you could run Krusader without getting too deeply into Dependency Hell as you should already have the basic KDElibs along with qt3.3.8 installed to run K3b, see? Just a thought anyway.
And that's my take on the situation without nuking the entire drive with endless 0's and 1's.

Amicalement/Cheers!
Eyes-Only
"L'Peau-Rouge"