need to rma a flash drive; secure erase/reformatting needed?

[vexingv]

i've been having troubles with my extremely slow flash drive (sub 1 MB/s transfer speeds) and after reading the AT flash drive roundup and performing my own benchmarks i decided to contact iomega to get it a RMA. they've granted me an rma.

questions:
-do i need to "securely" format my flash drive?
-are there programs designed specifically for flash drives or do the ones for hard drives work as well?
-are there any recommendations for (preferrably freeware) programs?

thanks

 

[QED]

-do i need to "securely" format my flash drive?

Only if you are concerned about someone viewing whatever you had on the flash drive.

-are there programs designed specifically for flash drives or do the ones for hard drives work as well?

I'm not aware of any flash-specific programs... bu presumably the ones for hard drives should suffice. Actually, flash does not suffer the same level of image retention that drives do so you might not need the same level of protection...

-are there any recommendations for (preferrably freeware) programs?

If you are really, REALLY concerned, I would just copy of bunch of random windows files, format, and repeat (with different random files) several times. Unless you are shipping the drive straight to the CIA, once or twice should be more than enough...

JMHO

 

[Zepper]

There is no magnetic retention in Flash chips - a simple reformat using the tools supplied with or recommended in your flash drive's instructions will do it.

.bh.