CAUTION: The steps below will completely wipe the data from the USB drive you select. Make sure you choose the correct drive and backup any files on the drive you may need to keep. For example, this USB drive is F: METHOD 1: Using the cipher command line tool cipher is a built-in command line tool in the Windows operating system that can be used to encrypt or decrypt data on drives.
It can be used to securely erase the FREE SPACE on a USB drive. Note – this is FREE SPACE only – if you want to erase the entire drive you must first format the drive so that it ALL free space. The free space is overwritten three times: • with a series of 0’s • with a series of 255’s • with a series of random numbers • Click on the Windows button at the bottom left of the screen, type “cmd’ and when it appears in the list click on “Command Prompt” • • Enter the following command making sure to replace X with the drive letter you want to erase • cipher /w:X: • METHOD 2: Using the diskpart command line tool diskpart is a built-in command line tool in the Windows operating system that is normally used to manage drives, partitions and mappings (partitions to letters). It can also be used to erase a USB drive by removing all existing partitions and writing a series of o’s. • Click on the Windows button at the bottom left of the screen, type “cmd’ and when it appears in the list click on “Command Prompt” • • Enter the following command to start diskpart • diskpart • The diskpart program will load, once it’s ready you will see “DISKPART>” at the command prompt.