Dec 16, 2020 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions
Flash drives are used for quick data transfer between computers. It is also a handy and portable storage device that helps in taking your important data wherever you are going. However, if a flash drive gets misplaced then the data present on it can be compromised. Therefore, you must wipe the flash drive after every use so that there is no trace of its former data left behind on it. However, do keep in mind that wiping the USB drive doesn't mean simply deleting all of its data. Deleting the files stored on the flash drive won't erase them and a good data recovery tool can retrieve them within minutes.
Remo Drive Wipe is probably the best data eraser application of its kind. Remo Drive Wipe erases data permanently from your flash drive beyond recovery, thereby eliminating the chances of misuse of data. The software incorporates strong algorithm which ensures the files/folders are wiped out permanently. Go to ' Tools ' in the left menu. Click on ' Drive Wiper ' under Tools and select your USB Flash Drive. Set Wipe to ' Entire Drive (All data will be erased) '. In Security choose Simple, Advanced, or Complex Overwrite depending on the level of security you want your data to be wiped. Back up anything you want to keep, such as photos, software product keys, etc. When the hard drive. Except for running some commands to erase flash drive, you can directly use a professional hard drive eraser, which can help you securely wipe flash drive clean while minimizing data recovery chances. How to center a video in imovie. I had been trying to perform such task via AOMEI Partition Assistant, it is FREE to use, so no need to worry you will be charged. Eraser is a free program that is recommended by the creators of DBAN (a bootable hard drive erasing tool).
Part 1: How to Permanently Wipe Flash Drive
If you want topermanently erase the USB stickand ensure that its data can't be recovered, then even wiping USB drive isn't enough. There are some data recovery tools powerful enough to even piece together the data fromformatted flash drivestoo. So, when you need to erase the contents of the flash drive beyond the scope of recovery, you need to use a data erasure tool. There are various such tools available on the internet but not all of them can provide you the desired results.Stellar BitRaser for Fileis proven flash drive eraser that work. It can help you in wiping clean your flash drive and prevent the erased data from ever being recovered.
The following is a tutorial with step-wise guidelines that can help you learn how to use Stellar BitRaser for File to flash drive data wiping.
- Free download Stellar BitRaser for File on Windows computer, and connect a flash drive to PC.
- Launch BitRaser for File, click the section 'Erase Now' and select your flash drive.
- Click the 'Erase Now' button to start permanently wipe flash drive.
- You can reboot your system after the erase is complete.
You don't need to take multiple passes to permanently wipe usb drive when using Stellar BitRaser for File. Just a single pass of this software would erase the data on the USB drive forever. However, if you aren't satisfied then you can have two additional passes. This is just to ensure beyond a shadow of a doubt that the flash drive is completely wiped and its former data is now unrecoverable.
Part 2: How to Wipe Flash Drive with in-built Format Option
You will find a format feature in every Mac or Windows-powered PC. You can use this feature to wiping the USB stick. Following these simple steps can help you permanently delete everything from your flash drive.
Step 1: Wait for the PC torecognize the USB flash driveafter inserting it into the PC's USB port.
Step 2: Locate the disk name of your flash drive in the My Computer window and then right-click it.
Step 3: Click the Format option in the menu that appears.
Step 4: A new window will open providing you a bunch of options.
You will see the file system and thestorage capacityof your flash drive in this window. The file system can either be FAT32 or NTFS while the flash drive's name would be shown as the volume label. Click Start without making any changes to the settings.
Step 5: Let the format process finish which can take a few minutes to complete. The flash drive's size would determine the time taken by the format process. Don't disconnect the USB flash drive until the format process is completed.
Step 6: Eject your flash drive from the USB port after the Format Successful message has been displayed on the screen.
Formatting will erase the flash drive's data. However, do keep in mind that data recovery software can be used for recovering the data erased from the pen drive using formatting and deleting options. Simply deleting the files would be enough if the files on the flash drive aren't worth much but using a USB flash drive eraser tool becomes a must if the flash drive holds sensitive data belonging to your clients.
Part 3: How to Erase USB drive Using Command Prompt
If you are an advanced computer user, using Command Prompt will also be an ideal choice to wipe USB stick data and regain full storage capacity. How to combine imovie projects.
Step 1: Open the start menu and type 'Command Prompt', right click to 'Run as Administrator'.
Step 2: Use the diskpart command lines to clean flash drive data completely. Type the commands in the image line by line:
If you see a message showing 'DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk', congratulations, everything works properly. Now, you can create new partitions in Disk Management on your computer.
To sum it up, flash drives are extremely useful for quick transfer of data but need to be wiped from time to time to make space for new data. Moreover, wipe USB drive is also necessary to prevent data leakage if the flash drive is lost or gets in the wrong hands. To wipe USB drive, you either need to format it several times or use a third-party flash drive erasing tool. Since USB stick erasing tools likeStellar BitRaser for Filecan permanently erase data from flash drives and ensure that it can't be recovered, using them is a much better option.
USB Topic
- Recover USB Drive
- Format USB Drive
- Fix/Repair USB Drive
- Know USB Drive
Do you want to permanently wipe USB flash drive and ensure that data cannot be recovered by anybody? There are two methods here to safely clear data off USB drive and make nothing recoverable.
Overview on wiping USB drive
When do you need to wipe a USB drive?
�How to completely wipe a USB drive?
Method 1: Wipe USB Flash Drive by Using Inbuilt Format Option
Method 2: Completely wipe USB Flash Drive with Eassos DiskGenius
Overview on wiping USB drive
USB flash drive is a miniature high-capacity mobile storage product that uses a USB interface to connect a computer. It is portable, fast and easy to use and carry. Like hard disk, you may need to wipe a USB flash drive sometimes.
When do you need to wipe a USB drive?
- Get some more space to store new data. Erasing USB drive deletes all data on the device and you can get all free space to be reused.
- The data is sensitive information that needs to delete permanently.
- Secure erase all the data on the USB flash drive before selling the device.
- Remove unknown virus or malware on USB flash drive.
- Change file system format, such as change FAT32 to NTFS, convert NTFS to exFAT or Ext4.
How to completely wipe a USB drive?
You cannot wipe data from the USB flash drive completely with a simple deletion or formatting, because any one can easily recover them with using any data recovery software. USB drive recovery programs can be easily downloaded from the Internet and it is quite easy to retrieve deleted or formatted data from USB drives. To completely clear an SD card, hard drive or USB flash drive needs extra operations. In this instruction, I will show you two methods that to erase data on USB flash drive permanently.
�Method 1: Wipe USB Flash Drive by Using Inbuilt Format Option
All computers using Windows system comes with an inbuilt format option to erase everything from a USB flash drive. However, many of us format disks by way of quick format which completes within seconds, but cannot clean data for good. Actually, we can perform a full format on USB drive, which is able to erase data byte by byte so that files cannot be recovered by any means. How to clean data completely using the full formatting option? Let's have a close look at the process:
Step 1 Insert the USB flash drive into your computer, wait a few second and let the computer do its job - detect the USB flash drive and install the USB driver.
Step 2 Open File Explorer by double-clicking This PC and you can find the drive icon of your USB drive.
Step 3 Open the USB flash drive and move the important data to computer hard drive in order to create a backup.
Step 4 Right-click on the USB flash drive that you want to wipe and select 'Format' option from the context menu.
How To Wipe A Flash Drive Mac
Step 5 Select file system type from drop-down list and set Allocation unit size. If you do not know how to choose, you can follow suggested option.
Step 6 Unselect 'Quick Format' option and click Start button. Then Windows will start full formatting the selected drive.
Note: Quick format does not erase data permanently, and you can recover lost data from formatted disk easily using data recovery software, while full formatting takes longer time to complete and wipes data complete. If this drive contains important data, you should create a backup in advance.
Method 2: Completely wipe USB Flash Drive with Eassos DiskGenius
Apart from full formatting USB drive, you can also use third-party software to wipe a USB drive. Here we recommend a free Windows partition manager – Eassos DiskGenius to clear data for you. DiskGenius can erase data of any partition or hard disk or USB flash drive directly and easily that the data cannot be recovered by any data recovery software. When erasing data, you can make some other settings.
Step 1 Launch Eassos DiskGenius software from your computer.
Step 2 Select the USB flash drive that you want to erase data and then click on 'Tools' from the main menu and click on 'Erase Sectors' option.
DiskGenius will pop up this window:
How To Wipe A Usb Stick
In this window, you can set these following options:
- Change the partition or disk or USB flash drive you want to erase data
- You can specify the sector range that the data need to be erased. If you select to erase data of partition, the sector number means the beginning and the ending sector of the partition.
- You can appoint hex characters to fill sectors.
- You can also set the computer's behavior when you finish the erasing data
Step 3 Click 'Erase'. You can see the following warning message prompting the operating erases data permanently and wiped data cannot be recovered. How to make a printscreen.
How To Wipe A Flash Drive Windows 10
Step 4 Click 'Erase' button if you do want to erase data. Also, you can cancel it if you change your decision.
Step 5 Wait for the process to complete.
How To Wipe A Flash Drive Or Sd Card On Mac Computer
If you think this software satisfies your requirement, you can download this tool to erase data. Files cleared by this feature cannot be recovered, which is a good option to protect privacy.
How To Wipe A Flash Drive On Linux
