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How to Erase Drive Data Before Selling It

Hi Guys, I wanted to sell my old USB and for selling it i formatted the USB to prevent the data recovery. For the confirmation of permanent data deletion i downloaded the data recovery software and that recovery tool is able to recover my data from the formatted drive. I don't want my data to be recovered with any data recovery tool. Is there anyone who can help me in this?

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0 Yashraj S over 5 years ago

Hi Adin Abel

Can you please let us know if this is in context with any Sophos products? This forum is for Sophos product related questions only.

Thanks,

Yashraj Singha
Manager | Global Community Support
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0 Badrobot over 5 years ago

Formatting any hard disk or usb stick will not erase the data it is merely marked as available space, you will need an application to write over the existing data with random information or 1's and 0's. To be safe you should also do multiple passes. This can be done on Windows through powershell or there is multiple applications as well. Points for using a data recovery tool to see of you could get the files back, now you just need to figure out the delete part.

https://macpaw.com/how-to/securely-delete-files-windows

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/securely-delete-files-mac/

https://www.digitalcitizen.life/which-are-best-file-erasers-comparing-5-most-popular-file-shredders

Respectfully,

Badrobot
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