I want to erase my USB flash drive completely

[deep1234]

hi guys, I need a software that can erase my USB flash drive completely (no recovery). What software can do this? I know about dban but this one is for the entire hard disk and cant be used on a USB flash.

And thank you in advance.

[Pupik]

Eraser is good.

http://eraser.heidi.ie/

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

The following should erase the contents of a USB flash RAM drive:

1. Open a Command Prompt (filename: CMD.EXE) in Windows. If you are running Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7, you will need to open an elevated command prompt.
   
2. Start DiskPart (filename: DISKPART.EXE), the command line disk partitioning tool. The DISKPART> will appear.
   
3. At the DISKPART> prompt, type "LIST DISK" (without quotes) and press enter. A list of currently-mounted disk drives will be displayed.
   
4. At the DISKPART> prompt, type "LIST DISK" (without quotes) and press enter. A list of currently-mounted disk drives will be displayed. Your USB flash RAM drive will show up with a number like 1, 2, 3, 4 and so forth.
   
5. At the DISKPART> prompt, type "SELECT DISK n" (without quotes), where n is the number of USB flash RAM drive and press enter.
   
6. At the DISKPART> prompt, type "CLEAN" (without quotes) and press enter. This tells DiskPart to zero-out (write 0's) across the entire disk. It may take a few moments for the operation to run, depending upon the capacity and speed of your USB flash RAM drive. When finished, you will have an empty USB flash drive.
   

At this point, you can type "EXIT" and press enter to quit, however, if you would like to format the disk or make it bootable (for a Windows Vista or Windows 7 installation), you can do so by following these steps:

1. At the DISKPART> prompt, type "CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY" (without quotes) and press enter. This creates a primary disk partition utilizing all of the flash RAM drive's capacity.
   
2. At the DISKPART> prompt, type "SELECT PARTITION 1" (without quotes) and press enter. This tells DiskPart you wish to perform operations on the partition (disk volume) you just created.
   
3. At the DISKPART> prompt, type "ACTIVE" (without quotes) and press enter. This tells DiskPart to make the disk partition startable, e.g., allows an operating system to be booted from the partition.
   
4. At the DISKPART> prompt, type either one of the following commands:
   • "FORMAT FS=FAT32 QUICK" (without quotes) and press enter to format the USB flash drive using the FAT32 file system
     
   • "FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK" (without quotes) and press enter to format the USB flash drive using the NTFS file system.
     

It may take a moment or two to perform a quick format.

[*]At the DISKPART> prompt, type "ASSIGN" (without quotes) and press enter. This tells DiskPart to assign the first available drive letter to the partition (disk volume) you just created on the USB flash RAM drive.

[*]At the DISKPART> prompt, type "EXIT" (without quotes) and press enter to exit the DiskPart program.

You should have now an USB flash drive which is empty, but can be used as installation media for Windows Vista or Windows 7, should you decide to copy the contents of an installation DVD over to the drive and later use it for that purpose.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[witalit]

Nice reply Goretsky. Need more detailed replies like that on these forums!

[kimsland]

Nice reply Goretsky.

Yes good post (Y) , as I'm now saving this thread ;) I'll post two common tools:

1.

HP USB Disk Storage Format Utility

This will format most USB flash drives

It can be known to recover Flash drives that are un-responsive too.

2.

If that doesn't work try this one:

Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool (USB Flash drive "format" that is ;) )

[Plarkster]

I asked a similar question recently and got some great replies - the thread is here. I ended up using most of the suggestions - worth the time for peace of mind.