is wiping all DATA from USB Drives permanently an impossibility?

[Deleted member 2707986]

i was reading an article on PC-World about killing data and it says that wiping data permanently on modern flash memory based drive is actually impossible, unless you have obtained a special tool from the vendor of the specific flash memory drive that you have. honestly this is the first time i've heard of this, i figured a professional data wiping tool like killdisk doing a "one-pass-all-zeroe"s on all data blocks would be sufficient, but apparently this might not be the case afterall.

here's a quote of the article:

*Block-overwrite software isn’t reliable with NAND-based media because of the voodoo that flash-storage controllers use when writing and deleting data.

*USB flash drives don’t support standard ATA secure-erase or TRIM—so unless you’re using a secure, encrypted type, you’ll need to contact the vendor for an erase utility.

*You could overwrite the entire drive or just free space with files. This will work to a point, but—especially on SSDs—some blocks used in over-provisioning and marked as bad can’t be copied over. They may retain data you want to erase.

so what am i supposed to do? i have invoices/receipts containing address & full name of my clients that i need to wipe from a branded usb drive. if regular formatting tools don't work on modern usb drive, what are my other options?

 

[DSzymborski]

If this is just a little USB flash drive and you need security *that* strong for this data that even a disk-wiping tool isn't enough security for you, I'd just destroy the drive.

 

[USAFRet]

What is the future disposition of these drives?

If your continued use, any data will eventually be overwritten into nothingness.

 

[Deleted member 2707986]

thanks, that's probably the surefire way i guess.

i also have some data that i need to destroy on my usb hard-drive (non-SSD), i can't decide whether to use "DoD 5220.22" or the "Write Zero" method, since whichever one i pick will be the very state that the hdd will be left in when i throw it in the trash.which one do you think i should pick? (i don't really want to destory this HDD just yet, need to use it for a little while longer.)

 

[Deleted member 2707986]

What is the future disposition of these drives?

If your continued use, any data will eventually be overwritten into nothingness.

so if i keep filling the HDD with data over and over again, and then erasing it over and over again, the old data will eventually disappear right?

thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

so if i keep filling the HDD with data over and over again, and then erasing it over and over again, the old data will eventually disappear right?

thanks!

For your HDD, a single pass with DBAN will work.

For the flash drives, continued use or run through a shredder.

 

[Deleted member 2707986]

thank you so much for helping me with this! i am in your debt! ^^