USB sticks are made up of a lot of recyclable materials, such as the plastic casing. Next, use a drill and appropriate safety equipment to turn these central parts into a fine powder. To begin, take the case off the USB stick and remove all parts except the circuit board and the controller chips.

In this instance, you should physically destroy the USB stick in question. To stop your data ending up in the wrong hands, you’ll want to look into a data destruction solution which offers you 100% certainty and physical proof that the data is gone. Simply erasing the files on your USB doesn’t mean they’re gone forever in fact, IT experts and even some free-to-download software can mean it’s possible to restore your files. These offer a relatively quick way to wipe data so that you can reuse your device, and they avoid the possibility that you will press the wrong button or option – a risk that comes with manual formatting.īe sure to have strong anti-virus software in operation before downloading unknown material from the Internet. Several USB stick clearing software packages are available for download online. For that reason, it’s wise to look into another option to clear the drive, like secure data wiping software like Blancco or secure physical data destruction. It’s a common misconception that one of the simplest ways to clear data off a USB stick is to format it.īut although files disappear from view when a USB stick is formatted, the data in question is not actually removed forever and your files are still retained in the recesses of the drive. In this blog post, we’ll take a look at some of the ways you can effectively carry out a data wipe on USB memory sticks in order to prevent future data losses or problems. USB sticks might only cost a few pounds when you pick them up from a computer shop, but if you’ve got data on them then their value becomes much higher.Īs a responsible data handler, it’s important to keep your sensitive information protected and to fully wipe it when it is no longer needed.

How to clear a usb stick