How can a USB drive be entirely erased? Make sure to fully delete your USB drive before you sell it or give it to someone else. This article provides safe, easy-to-use, and tried-and-true techniques for fully wiping up Flash drives without jeopardizing data.
A USB drive is a portable, very capacious storage device that utilizes the USB interface to link to a computer. It is easy to use, transport, and lightweight. Sometimes you might need to wipe a USB drive clean, just like you would with a hard drive.
Some users may format the USB device or destroy files in order to fully clean the flash drive. Files cannot be completely erased by simple deletion or formatting, though. We’ll go into more detail about this below. Let’s first discuss why users are needed to do this task.
Why It’s Important to Wipe Your Flash Drive Totally
It becomes vital or necessary to fully delete a USB device for a number of reasons:
- Expand the quantity of space that can be used to hold new data. When a USB drive is fully erased, all of its data is also erased, leaving all of its available space for use.
- Because the material on the drive is so sensitive, it must be permanently erased.
- Make sure to securely erase all of the data on a USB flash drive before selling it.
- It is advisable to eliminate any malware or unknown infection from a USB flash drive.
- Modify the format of the file system, for instance, going from FAT32 to NTFS or NTFS to exFAT or Ext4.
Can Data Be Recovered After a USB Flash Drive Is Totally Erased?
Formatting might be useful if all you want to do is fix corruption or problems with your USB device. But formatting is not the only option if you want to totally erase a USB drive before giving it to someone else, selling it, or throwing it away.
Formatting a USB drive just renders its contents worthless; yet, numerous data recovery programs are accessible to retrieve information from a formatted USB drive. Such software gives a malicious person access to your data, increasing the possibility that you will be arrested or face other legal repercussions. Use the CubexSoft Data Recovery tool to recover data from a formatted USB flash drive on your own.
Therefore, the safest method of totally wiping the data from a flash drive that cannot be restored is not to delete the data or format the storage device.
How to Completely Wipe USB Drive Permanently? – 3 Methods
In this section, you will find different ways to entirely erase USB drive: –
#1. Utilize the built-in format tool to fully erase a flash drive.
- Connect the USB drive to the computer.
- Find the USB disk by opening Windows File Explorer.
- To format the drive, do a right-click on it and select Format.
- Select the file system and capacity that you want.
- Click the Start button after checking the “Quick Format” box to fully erase a USB drive.
#2. Complete Wipe a USB Drive by CMD
- Start by connecting the USB flash drive to your PC.
- To enter the Run dialog, press the Windows key and R simultaneously.
- To fully wipe a flash drive, put CMD into the search box and click OK.
Enter the following commands one at a time, pressing Enter after each line:
- list disk in diskpart
- choose a disk. (Be sure to provide your USB drive’s number.)
- clean, or clean everything
- To execute each command individually, use the enter key.
- At last, the data on your USB stick has been successfully deleted.
- Now, wait until the wiping or erasing is complete. Enter exit once you see the “DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk” message. Next, confirm that a USB drive has been wiped entirely.
Limitation of Manual Method to Permanently Delete USB Files
- Both methods need a lot of procedures and effort, particularly if you need to clean a large number of USB drives.
- Some people may find it difficult to use the format tool and CMD, which could result in errors or a USB drive not being fully erased.
- Despite your best efforts, there’s always a possibility that someone could use specialized software to recover your data.
- It’s uncertain if you’ve entirely erased the flash drive, even if you follow all the instructions.
#3. Professional Way to Fully Delete USB Drive Data
As we can see, the internet offers a variety of tools that can be used to erase data. To download one, though, you have to be sure it’s totally secure. One of the most widely used programs for erasing files is CubexSoft Data Wipe Software, which we suggest. This do-it-yourself program efficiently removes internet searches, history, system and application traces, as well as already deleted and wiped data (formatted or erased). We guarantee that this program will quickly erase everything on your flash drive. In order to fully erase a USB drive, simply download the program.
Conclusion
We’ve covered the importance of completely wiping flash drives in this post. We’ve supplied the best and most user-friendly do-it-yourself program so you can finish this task fast and easily. With no problems at all, users can completely wipe a USB drive on Windows by using the suggested application. This application has a really user-friendly UI. Both technically knowledgeable and non-technically knowledgeable users can easily complete this task.