- @Damon suggested in a comment to use a hammer. Considering that USB flash drives are now cheap, and that is is hard to guess exactly what the firmware actually does, if I really wanted to securely erase a USB flash drive before disposing it, I would use a heavy hammer to break it into pieces.
- Back up anything you want to keep, such as photos, software product keys, etc. When the hard drive.
- Remove all additional drives from the computer excluding the drive you are booting from and the drive you want to Erase/Clean. Items to note: This article will walk through the steps of using the Microsoft Diskpart Erase utility to Clean the disk of a previous partition and format, including any data on the drive.
Sometimes your USB flash drive becomes stubborn or acts weird when you'd like to delete a file or format, sometimes you get an error or the file comes back after you delete it.
In this post, I'm going to mention a few tips that you can use in order to fix this issue and what to do in case you mistakenly deleted an important file and you want to get it back.
If you do not wanna waste time going through my unnecessarily long steps, here are the short steps that helped me: 1) Insert the USB flash drive into the USB port. 2) Click Start, type devmgmt.msc in the Search textbox and press Enter. 3) Find Disk Drives and expand it. 4) Find the USB flash drive you want to format, and double-click it.
Quick Tip: before we get started take a quick look at the USB flash drive and make sure that the read-only switch is turned off if it has one.
What happens when you delete a file from a USB flash drive?
Have you ever wondered what happens to a file when you delete it from a USB flash drive or where it goes? Well, the answer is it remains on that drive until it gets overwritten with new files, that's the opposite of deleting a file from your hard disk where it gets sent first to the recycle bin and then you have the option to delete it permanently. How to open a spreadsheet without excel.
Can you recover deleted files from the USB flash drive?
Yes, you can do that easily using the help of one if the free tools out there, but like everything else life, if you want to recover more data you got to purchase the full version of whatever tool you're using, some of the tools you can use to recover your data are Recuva, MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free, Disk Drill, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free.
Quick research should tell you what is the best tool to use.
The drive is read-only or encrypted
One of the reasons why your USB flash stick is set to read-only is because it went bad, it means you can't use it anymore and it's time to buy a new one especially if it's too old and its capacity is too small (2, 4 or 8 Gigabytes).
You can tell it's gone bad when you try to copy a file from it, I've seen it one time when I was trying to copy files from an SD card it was so slow and kept freezing.
Try out some of the tips below to format the drive if it hasn't gone bad yet.
Another way to remove the read-only option is to follow these steps provided by a user on Super User forum
Format the whole drive
Let me guess you right clicked the USB stick and clicked on the format option but it didn't format eventually or an error came up, right? Well, the next thing to do is the following.
Format the USB Flash Drive Using the Command Prompt
The DiskPart feature is a powerful way to deal with storage devices or partitions and you can use it to format the USB stick, follow this guide carefully so you don't format the wrong partition.
USB memory stick can't be formatted
If the USB stick becomes stubborn you can use the software below or anything similar to force it to format. How much is minecraft on google play.
BitRaser for File
Honestly, I haven't tried it myself but someone recommended it on a forum so it should work fine.
Download it and give it a try.
Viruses
Format the USB Flash Drive Using the Command Prompt
The DiskPart feature is a powerful way to deal with storage devices or partitions and you can use it to format the USB stick, follow this guide carefully so you don't format the wrong partition.
USB memory stick can't be formatted
If the USB stick becomes stubborn you can use the software below or anything similar to force it to format. How much is minecraft on google play.
BitRaser for File
Honestly, I haven't tried it myself but someone recommended it on a forum so it should work fine.
Download it and give it a try.
Viruses
Oh! What can I say about viruses or malware, as with everything related to technology or data viruses can ruin a lot of stuff for us, these viruses can mess up the files stored on the USB flash drive and make you go crazy.
UsbFix
UsbFix is a free malware removal tool that's designed for these types of problems, run a full scan and wait for the results, if it catches anything then great, your USB stick is not dead yet, get rid of the infected files if they're not recoverable and format the whole thing.
'Do you need to completely wipe data from flash drive. So, you come to the perfect place. Today! we are going to discuss the proficient method to resolve how do you completely wipe a flash drive issue. Simply, go thoroughly to the complete article to learn more.'
Overview
In this technological arena, almost every single user prefer a flash drive to store multiple data files. Mainly, there are several reasons to opt for a flash drive in comparison to others. Flash drive is easy-to-use and a user can carry it anywhere without any hassle. But, after utilizing a flash drive so many times, you may require to erase data from pen drive to make more space to add new data on it.
However, to do so, users looking for an instant solution to completely wipe a flash drive. So, here, we come up with an efficient solution to resolve the issue such as how do you completely wipe a flash drive. So, let's get started.
Why Do You Require to Wipe a Flash Drive?
- When you need to make more room to store new data. So, erasing flash drive deletes the entire data from the device and you can get all free space to be reused.
- To remove an unknown virus, worms, and malware from the flash drive.
- Whereas, you need to change file system format, such as FAT32 to NTFS, convert NTFS to exFAT or Ext4.
- Your flash drive might be consists of the crucial data information that wanted be delete permanently.
- Often times, users want to resell their flash drive. At times, secure erase all the data from the flash drive has become an important action.
How to Wipe a Flash Drive Using In-Built Format Option?
All local machines which comes with Windows system having an in-built option to wipe a flash drive completely. Here, in this section, we are going to discuss the directions to implement the procedure to completely wipe a flash drive instantly. So, follow all the below-outlined steps in a sequential manner to get the positive resultant.
- #1: First of all, plug in your flash drive and let your local machine to recognize it.
- #2: After that, you have to open This PC/My Computer and right-click on the USB drive disk name.
- #3: Now, find the Format option from the context menu to begin wiping procedure.
- #4: Subsequently, you confront with a pop-up wizard with multiple options. Here, by default, the file system can be FAT32 or NTFS. In addition, the Volume label field just indicates the name of the attached flash drive.
- #5: Additionally, select the Quick Format option then click on the Start button. Here, Windows will automatically start formatting the specified drive.
- #6: At last, you get a prompted message that says Format Successful. Now, you can eject the wiped flash drive.
Attention Note!
In case, if you mistakenly wipe a vital data file, after implementing the above-stated steps. So, you can utilize an instant solution to recover permanently deleted data from pen drive. It is a third-party application named as Pen Drive Data Recovery Software. With the help of this software, you can quickly recover corrupted, deleted and formatted data from flash drive. Mainly, it facilitates enhanced features to recover permanently deleted data from pen drive. Moreover, you can check and utilize this world's best recovery software by visiting our authoritative web page.
Its Time to Verge
How To Clear A Usb Stick
This post highlights the top technique to resolve the most commonly asked query such as how do you completely wipe a flash drive. Hopefully, you will resolve your issue after executing the above-stated manual way to completely wipe a flash drive.
