Computer users need to exercise caution when throwing away their USB drives, as data was found on many secondhand flash drives recycled in the US. USB Secure Erase helps you secure your data for disposal and all your sensitive and private information are permanently deleted. The built-in format program on Microsoft Windows does not thoroughly wipe all the data on your USB drive, if you keep the Quick Format settings unchanged.
USB Secure Erase software writes different patterns of junk data to your USB drive multiple times, and make the data recovery impossible. MBR (Master Boot Record), boot records, OS boot loaders, partition tables, active partition flags, and all partitions as well as space in between are overwritten by irregular patterns of junk data. Any known or unknown virus is eliminated from the USB device in the process of data erase. The software does not analyze file system or operating system on the USB drive; it could be Windows, Linux, Unix, MacOS, or any other OS with one or more partition. Bootable USB drives loses the capabilities of booting to OS after the erase.
The software wipes the USB drive with such algorithms as US DoD 5220.22-M, US DoD 5200.28-STD, US DoE, Bruce Schneier, German BCI/VSITR, Peter Gutmann, Pseudo RNG, Windows RNG and Quick 3-Pass Wipe. The first eight algorithms are popular in electronic data destruction business, and meet the requirements laid out by many organizations.
Included in the software is advanced Format feature, which allows you to format your USB drive to FAT32, FAT, ExFAT, and NTFS. Many options such as allocation unit size, volume label, quick format, and low level format are available. The software optionally immunizes your USB drive against all types of Autorun viruses after the target file system is set to FAT32.
Supported USB drives include USB memory stick, USB flash drive, USB pen drive, USB thumb drive, and portable USB drive. More than 20 brands of USB drive controllers have been tested.