Question Is there any difference

[nbartolo7]

between manually emptying the contents of a USB or Hard drive vs. formatting it? Does it achieve the same purpose?

I ask because I need to give an empty drive to someone who will put files in there and return it to me, but they did not specify whether I should empty the drive with a format or by just making sure no other docs are there. I heard that if you need to give or sell a drive to someone, then in that case you should format. But that is not the case here.

 

[jeremyj_83]

between manually emptying the contents of a USB or Hard drive vs. formatting it? Does it achieve the same purpose?

I ask because I need to give an empty drive to someone who will put files in there and return it to me, but they did not specify whether I should empty the drive with a format or by just making sure no other docs are there. I heard that if you need to give or sell a drive to someone, then in that case you should format. But that is not the case here.

If you are giving a drive to someone or selling it you should wipe the drive using a tool like DBAN Boot and Nuke to erase all traces of previous files. In your case formatting or erasing via File Explorer will result in the same result. The drive will be empty and can be filled by someone else. The difference between reformatting/erasing and something like DBAN is that the first two the file can be recovered with the right software. Whereas DBAN does other things to make sure the contents of the drive is unrecoverable.

 

[geofelt]

Since you are not worried about security, either method would work.
Formatting would be simpler and you will not forget to delete any file.

 

[Karadjgne]

All files on a drive have an address. When you delete a file through Windows, it's not actually deleted, instead Windows takes the address back, the file unchanged, but no longer 'findable' as that physical location is now free space. Software can recover that info by reading the drive and applying an address to any files it finds. Format goes beyond that by applying a variable to the name of the file, so if software did find it, it'd be listed as $$pic.mp$ instead of aspic.mp3, forcing someone to correctly guess the actual title in order to be accessed. Makes recovery extremely difficult for anything other than standard files like start.exe etc

 

[hotaru.hino]

For all intents and purposes, both do the same thing. Formatting is faster though.

However for security purposes you actually should fill the drive with dummy data first. Both emptying by deleting everything and formatting simply marks the data in the drive as free. It doesn't actually "remove" it in any meaningful sense. Filling the drive with dummy data is to make sure the data that remains actually doesn't contain anything meaningful.

 

[Bob.B]

between manually emptying the contents of a USB or Hard drive vs. formatting it? Does it achieve the same purpose?

I ask because I need to give an empty drive to someone who will put files in there and return it to me, but they did not specify whether I should empty the drive with a format or by just making sure no other docs are there. I heard that if you need to give or sell a drive to someone, then in that case you should format. But that is not the case here.

If your not worried about the data that was on the disk being recovered then either way will be fine.

 

[nbartolo7]

For all intents and purposes, both do the same thing. Formatting is faster though.

However for security purposes you actually should fill the drive with dummy data first. Both emptying by deleting everything and formatting simply marks the data in the drive as free. It doesn't actually "remove" it in any meaningful sense. Filling the drive with dummy data is to make sure the data that remains actually doesn't contain anything meaningful.

What would the best way of filling a large hard drive with dummy data be?

 

[nbartolo7]

Thanks all. Unsure who to give the trophy to.

 

[geofelt]

What would the best way of filling a large hard drive with dummy data be?

Define "best"
is it the fastest?
Is it the most difficult for a forensic detective to uncover any residual data?

For the purpose stated a to a friend a simple formatting will present a drive ready to copy to.

 

[Karadjgne]

You can choose how a drive is formatted. The simple format just removes any address links to the files, it's the fastest method by a long shot. A few minutes at most. You can also do a military format which physically writes over the entire drive, every file, every piece of code, all free space or unused space with a 1, effectively totally destroying any and all data, and it'll do so 3x or more passes, making it physically impossible to then 'undo' or recover that data. Which is followed by a simple format to remove any links. Trying to recover that, all you'd get is Every file labeled $$11111.11$ and the 'undo' button would give you back the same thing. On larger drives, that's an overnight procedure.

Fastest and Best are on opposite ends of the menu....

 

[nbartolo7]

Alright cool.