USB flash drives are doing the rounds and have grown in popularity. But most people who are done with their drives fail to dispose them off properly. Drives containing sensitive data need to be erased securely before they are thrown away or given away.
Why is that, you may ask. This is because deleted files can be recovered through different means and the data is not really deleted from the drive permanently.
Even though USB flash drives contain solid-state flash memory, since improper disposal of these drives could lead to the instance wherein someone could potentially recover all your sensitive files.
How to go about the elimination of data from the drive
CCleaner is one of the best drive-wiping tools, even the free version. Insert the drive, open CCleaner, and use the effective Drive Wiper feature to eliminate all data well enough.
Remember this action could reduce any cheap USB flash drive’s lifespan. And hence it is ideal to use the feature when disposing off the drive.
On a Mac, access the Disk Utility application, and after selecting the drive that you want to erase (the USB flash drive), erase heading. And under Security Options, erase the drive a couple of times. But deleting files only isn’t enough. Encrypting it is the safest way to dispose drives that you no longer need. Flash drives are anyways faster owing to their solid-state memory and quite portable too.
Flash drives impose complications since they move data to rarely used areas for long life in use. Secure-erase techniques that involve overwriting files does not clear the data effectively. Dumping any amount of random data three times in a row on the flash drive could work too
- Open command prompt on your PC and type “format e: /p:3,” where e stands for the drive you want to clean data from.
- Similarly in the Mac, use the Disk Utility app to erase the data from USB flash drive and then choose the “3-pass secure erase” option in “Security Options”.
Some vendors provide apps with simpler secure-erase tools with the flash drives. Also, most people do not use the method owing to the incredibly slow process that laptops need to delete data from large drives, especially for doing a triple overwrite of a 4 GB flash drive.
Encryption and Elimination
Encrypting drives can make all data and contents of the drive unreadable. Erasing it and encrypting the data again can get the entire data disappear. On a Mac, the drive can be encrypted, follow its prompts. Open Disk Utility, choose the drive and then eliminate data to go back to default. Disk Utility can help you erase the drive and then go through with the encryption.
After encrypting the drive, it is essential to reformat it and then repeat the encryption method. Reformat it a second time after which the screen will stop throwing reminders and deadlines for the process.
Encryption before Time
You could refer to disk encryption ahead of time. Encrypted drives are safe as a house while leftover data on the drive will be in encrypted state. Performing factory resets will also ensure the data isn’t accessible.