How to Securely Erase Flash Drive in Windows?

You can easily and securely erase flash drive like USB flash drive, SD card in Windows 10/8/7 under a flash drive eraser tool – AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Bryce

By Bryce / Updated on September 5, 2023

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Is formatting enough?

“I have purchased a new 64GB SanDisk SD card, so I intend to give my old 32GB Samsung flash drive to a friend. I want to make all things gone completely before giving. Is there anyone can tell me whether I can remove all data from it irrecoverably simply by formatting?”

The answer is negative

Formatting a flash drive only wipes its partition table and set a new file system. The data saved on it doesn’t disappear actually and just becomes invisible to the operating system. If you use certain professional data recovery software, the deleted data can be recovered easily. Thus, you are recommended to securely erase flash drive, which can wipe data from flash drive totally and irrecoverably. Then, how to perform complete data erase for a flash drive?

Great flash drive eraser tool for Windows

To get rid of data on a flash drive completely, a powerful flash drive eraser tool – AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional will be my preference. It is compatible with Windows 10/8.1/8/7, XP and Vista and rather easy to handle due to its concise and friendly graphic user interface.

The function Wipe Hard Drive of it allows you to totally wipe data from USB flash drive, SD card or hard disk drive (HDD). This function offers you four options listed below and you can choose one according to your own situation.

✔ Fill sectors with Zero: This way will write zero to all sectors on the flash drive.
✔ Fill sectors with random data: This method writes random data to all sectors, which is more secure than the first option.
✔ DoD 5220.22-M: A software-based data sanitization method, can prevent all software-based file recovery methods form recovering data. It is very much safer but takes a longer time.
✔ Gutmann: A software-based data sanitization way to overwrite existing information, preventing all software based file recovery methods from retrieving data and most hardware-based recovery methods form recovering information on the wiped flash drive. 35 passes make the erase more secure but take more time.

Wipe a flash drive clean step by step

Now, install AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional and take a look at the following detailed steps on how to securely erase flash drive in Windows 10/8/7. Or you can download its demo version to have a try at first.

Download DemoWin 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

Step 1. Plug the flash drive to a Windows-based computer and ensure that it can be detected by OS; then, run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Step 2. Locate the flash drive that you want to erase and choose Wipe Hard Drive among listed options. 

Wipe Hard Drive 16gb

Step 3. It will pop a small window. Here you can choose a method to wipe all data from your flash drive and click OK.

Wiping Method 16gb

Step 4. You’ll get to the main console. Confirm that the selected disk to wipe is the right one and click Apply.

Note: If you want to securely erase SSD, you can use SSD Secure Erase Wizard of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional, which allows you to completely wipe data from SSD and restore SSD’s performance. What you need to pay attention to is that this function can only be used on Windows 7 at present. 

Verdict

From all the above, it can be concluded easily that you can easily and securely erase flash drive within 4 steps under the help of a disk wipe utility – AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Actually, this tool enjoys more various powerful functions, allowing you to solve different problems. Such as, if you need to upgrade system disk to SSD without reinstallation, its Disk Clone Wizard should be your choice; if you accidentally deleted a partition, its Partition Recovery Wizard can help you to retrieve the deleted partition.

Bryce
Bryce · Staff Editor
Bryce is an editor of AOMEI Technology, he covers backup & restore, hard disk & partitions management, cloud files transfer, website & database backup and so on for AOMEI. He enjoys helping people find solutions to their problems. He loves traveling, Sleeping, reserching and so on. He enjoys helping people find solutions to their problems. He loves traveling, Sleeping, reserching and so on. He would like to spend all time on reaserching computer problems. He is a very cute boy.