If Someone Gives You A Free USB Stick, What's The Best Way To Securely Wipe It To Use It? 📦

9    28 Dec 2020 20:48 by u/owlie

What's the best way to make sure it has no viruses, or to make sure to delete everything so nothing harmful is left on the USB stick (if someone was on there to begin with)?

6 comments

7 u/StrategicTactic 28 Dec 2020 20:54
![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/596004330444685333/793220070318145546/iu.png) More seriously though- if you really want to be secure you would need to set up a wipe station that already has some good scrubbing software and is not connected to the internet or your local network. I recommend Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) if you can configure it for USB drives too.
4 u/m68k_ 28 Dec 2020 21:22
Just because you securely erase data from the stick, doesn't mean there isn't anything rigged with the actual hardware.
2 u/owlie [OP] 28 Dec 2020 21:53
true so do you think it's best to destroy it or recycle it? But also how likely is it to have that, either? Is there a use case for a usb stick that may have tampered hardware (something you can use it for that doesn't require it being perfect)?
2 u/m68k_ 29 Dec 2020 22:47
I'm sure it's extremely rare, but again, it depends on how you value your hardware, and in many cases today, your privacy. If anything, if you have a computer that you don't care about, you can test it on that.
1 u/All1000wombats 28 Dec 2020 20:54
Here's a quick article on how: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/erase-thumb-drive-pc-68286.html
2 u/owlie [OP] 28 Dec 2020 21:07
on a quick scan, this doesn't mention any secure way to do it, just how to erase (it assumes there's nothing problematic on the usb "dongle" to begin with)