Thumb Drive

[D1gger]

One of my coworkers asked to borrow my 2gb thumb drive to transfer some data to a print shop. Unfortunately, I had a bunch of personal data on the drive at the time, such as tax returns and a keepass password file (encrypted), so I was uncomfortable just erasing this data and handing him the drive.

I know deleting files off of a hard disk doesn't delete the data, and even a format will not truly eliminate the data, so is a USB memory stick the same?

How do I fully and completely erase data off of a thumb drive so if I lose it I don't have to panic?

We did find another memory stick for his immediate use, but the question remains.

 

[Denithor]

Do a low-level reformat of the drive, or else delete everything from it and write new data over the entire drive (copy a music library or a couple of DVD rip sections or something onto the drive until it's fully loaded).

Note that low-level format will likely wipe out the name of the drive so when you plug it in you're going to get a generic 'USB drive' found message instead of specific device name.

 

[roid450]

download Dban for thumb drives and such. itll kill anything on the USB drive, but dont forget to unplug ur hard drives if ur gonna boot off a cd with Dban on it. or itll kill everything on any hard drive.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Answer here