“How should you destroy old USB flash drives so that sensitive information cannot be recovered from them?”

Posted on by Fred Langa

It depends on what level of snooping you want to guard against.

But in all cases, it’s smart to start by reformatting and data-wiping any kind of drive/memory that you’re discarding. So, that’s the first step.

Next, you can deter casual snoops simply by destroying the physical USB package: Use pliers to break off the metal end of the USB stick, and/or to snap the whole stick in half.

Need more security? Use a hammer, pliers, or a large shredder to individually crush/shred the chips inside the USB’s case.

With the data deleted and overwritten; and the physical device broken or in pieces, your old data should be beyond recovery.

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1 Reply to ““How should you destroy old USB flash drives so that sensitive information cannot be recovered from them?””

  1. Previously, we would empty our Prefetch folder, to clean disk space. How do we get to that folder in Windows 10?

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