How to Wipe USB Flash Drive Clean?

I have 2 of these and one is a 2.0 and other is 3.0 usb. I currently have all the stuff i need saved into storage site so i could wipe everything off these usb. I saw that it has autorun.inf so there is a good chance i read that my usb flash drive have virus/infected. I want to wipe it fully clean.


How can i do this correctly? I read to click format and thats all? Or should i delete everything on it first, then click format? I already see theres an autorun.inf file so should i remove that first before formatting?


Thank you.

 

Here are some files that are currently in the usb that im not sure about


Autorun.inf
bootmgr
bootmgr.efi
pmp_usb
dmd-vhakc


A cd with a blueeish windows hard drive that says setup and is 104kb.


Does any of these look suspcious? The autorun.inf im sure is the one thing that other sites i read says is most likley a virus.

 

These three are present in a Windows install ISO, including the Setup.exe. Just format it and you'll be fine.

dmd-vhakc could be the moive A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas according to google, but yeah, it could be anything...

 

Formatting a drive will automatically delete everything on the drive, so you don't have to manually delete anything first. All you have to do is right-click on the drive's icon and click Format, then OK (or Start, whatever it's called).

 

I used superantispyware on my 3.0 usb and shows no problems. Howeer with the 2.0 usb... it has 18 threats and 2 of them are pup.delta.toolbar.


Does that mean then my usb was infected? Also i transferred same files to the 3.0 usb so thats why i think my new laptop could have virus b/c of this.


Okay so right click and format wipes everything completely including viruses right? If so, that sounds very simple. But are there viruses where you cant delete from usb?

 

is there reason why i can't delete pup.delta.toolbar superantispyware doesnt seem to allow it.

 

I think that pup is just a potentially unwanted program...and not a malware/virus threat. You could try roadkill's drive wipe for your usb's here-http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=14&Action=NewOSID&DownloadVersion=12.
Or just try what Jarhead recommended first- just go into start > computer > Right click on your usb drive > format.
Did you actually transfer what was on your usb's to your laptop HD?

 

Make sure the "quick format" option is NOT checked if you want to truly wipe your data, as it will perform a low-level format.

 

If windows built in format is giving you issues, you can look at several of the freeware programs.
But also built into windows is Diskpart and that is a lot more powerful.

You can check out this USB tutorial I did for people that lost space on a drive and learn how to use Diskpart to format.

Tutorial: Fix missing lost USB Thumbdrive Space - YouTube

 

No I didn't transfer what was on the usb to the laptops HD. But i read that opening the file is pretty much the same thing as tranferring to the document files on the new computer... So that is false?

 

Another thing i want to mention though is ever since i used the 3.0 usb in my new sager laptop, whenenver i used antispyware, i see over 100 infected files each time and each time i clean it, it shows as clean but when i rescan, it shows same thing. Im pretty sure the usb is the cause of it. Do you guys agree/disagree?


Also i have ads as well on ebay/amazon on this new laptop when i never had logged into these sites previously. WHat is strange was i saw an item that i typed in on amazon on my asus laptop... the later on i used my sager laptop and i saw the same exact item in the ad on my new laptop. Can you explain how in the world that could happen? That makes no sense whatsover as when i do see ads of items i viewed on amazon/ebay, it wiould show on the same asus computer. How in the world did that ad show up in my new sager laptop? I just thought the only way thats possible is the 3.0usb was used in the new laptop. Do you agree/disagree with this?


There can't be another explanation right?

 

Depends on the file and the security options on the OS. The files you list look like some sort of OS installation, though files can be named anything so I'm not 100% on that.

The type of USB connection (2.0, 3.0, etc) doesn't have any factor in whether you get malware or not, or what ads are displayed to you. Those ads sound like some sort of targeted advertising (fairly common on the web), though you can always use an addon like AdBlock Plus to deal with ads.

 

Thanks for that information.


One other thing. There many documents/files that i have in the usb that i want to keep. I wanted to keep it on a storage site like box.com. I want to make sure that when i transfer these documents from box.com to another computer, that there won't be any type of viruses/malware.


What is the best way to do this then? I assume scan it with antisuperspyware, malwarebytes and remove whatever is infectious. Then just upload all those files to box.com? Or should i delete the autorun.inf first before uploading all of those to box.com? Also when i upload, i pretty much just copy all of them then it uploads all the files at once.


When you say delete autorun.inf files, dont you mean that just 1 file? Not sure why you put plural on it. Also do you just click delete on it when you mean delete or thats not the proper way to delete it?


Because i want to make sure any file that i transfer from usb to box.com, none of it has virus/malware so when i open those files on another computer, doesn't matter if its an old or new computer, then it would be virus free. Is this possible or not? Because i did read something that in a site said the best thing to do would be just print out all those files/documents you need then scan each one into another computer. That however would obviously be a huge hassle. Also that wouldn't really work that well with word and excel documents if you get what i mean since i would still be using the same ones and continuing with it

 

I have no idea what website you're talking about, since printing out files and rescanning them sounds like a terrible idea. Lot of time and effort needed to do that, as you mention, but also some files that can't be printed (say, software) could also contain malware (say, a pirated copy of Office for example).

I've personally never heard of "Anti Super Spyware", so I don't really trust that it's an effective anti-malware program to begin with. Anyway, maybe you're seeing a log of running processes and thinking that that list is a list of malware ( Tweaks.com Forum - question re: results of antisuperspyware find as an example of what I'm talking about)? It would be useful if you posted the results of your scans on the flash drive here so we can see what your program is picking up...

Anyway, as general advice, it would be a decent idea to scan your files before uploading them to cloud storage like Box. It at least saves a step by allowing you to not have to scan them again on your other devices.

 

Okay i would like some help with this.


With my usb 3.0 hard drive, i had lot of files that where there. When i click on my computer... it showed a folder that said removable disk. I then copied every file into box.com. I then decided to manually delete a few of the files on the usb 3.0. I was going to delete the rest of the files later today. I just noticed that when i click on my computer now to click on the usb drive....It doesn't show a yellow folder. Instead it shows NO ICON AT ALL. That is strange b/c it always had a yellow folder until i deleted a few word/excel files. Why does it show this? At the moment that means i have a virus on my usb drive then right? I mean... theres no icon at all.


http://www.techchore.com/2009/08/7-signs-of-virus-infected-usb.html

Step 4 mentions that means virus most likely.


Also i had transferred all those documents to box.com WITHOUT deleting autorun and a few other programs. I did scan it already. So what am i suppose to do now then? Does that mean my files in box.com are infected then? I assume i can't just delete the autorun file and my other files on box.com would then be not infected?

Also does this mean my new sager laptop is infected then b/c i had this usb 3.0 in the new laptop?