Can't erase / clean flashdrive

[Flow]

Please, can anyone advise on a free but powerful anti virus?

 

The free Avast just won't erase/delete everything and that is what I want. It scans without deleting because this flash is used by different ppl daily in multiple infected computers, so just want not only the virus gone but everything removed daily.

 

Yes, I know I shouldn't give/use the same flash all over but it is what is at the company. So please do not bombard me with advise on "how" to keep my flah drives clean, but rather tell me a good and efficient way to clean them up / erase the files + viruses at the same time.

 

Thank you.

[Daffy D]

Err! have you tried formatting the flash drive

 

The free program Active KillDisk  - http://www.killdisk.com/killdisk-freeware.htm - Will clean everything of any drive.

 

Use with care

[dave_boo]

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M && sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX bs=1M && sudo gparted

Of course you then need to create your partition table again. make sure that you change the "X" to the actual drive letter.

 

This works in Linux; if you need Windows help listen to the other people.

[chrisinth]

Formatting would be the way to go for the thumb drive.

 

Might be an idea to 'disinfect' the other computers while you are at it.......................

[transam]

Anti virus free...I ended up using all of 10Bit free stuff, is very good. Anti virus, uninstall and Advanced system Care. I now have their ASC Ultimate Pro, the paid for version that has some great tools...

[ben2talk]

I think it was about 2007 that I shared my flashdrive use with a variety of infected environments. At that time I was also forced to use Windows due to some software.

 

It prompted me to create a completely virus free and safe environment which was incapable of being infected if I 1. Used a dirty flashdrive or 2. Decided to browse for keygenerators to try to steal software or 3. Look at dirty video's online (it was still a bit of a novelty in those days).

 

So I made some space - 100GB partition - and installed Linux. 

 

Top benefit - I could plug in the USB and select/copy any files that interested me to my hard disk (Data partition).

 

The first benefit I noticed is speed - Linux was just soooooo much faster (like ten times faster) in unzipping files from the USB to the HDD. Also easy to see any 'foreign' files and remove everything that isn't a document or image file etc...

 

There's the solution - if you have an SSD, it's only a few seconds to reboot. However, unless you're forced to use certain software, you'll end up just dropping Windows in the end. I have Windows installed now - it's in a virtualbox (boots in 10 seconds and has NO internet access - so there's no problem with malware. I can synchronise my phone and continue watching TV.

 

How's that? All USB's and the entire computer hasn't been scanned since 2007 and then can't be infected.

 

If you play around with bootable USB sticks, it's quite possible you can boot one at work too - you'll still have access to your Windows disks there (and access to stuff you can't imagine exist because they're invisible when running windows).

[bendejo]

On 7/2/2017 at 6:38 PM, Flow said:

so just want not only the virus gone but everything removed daily.

 

So every day you want to remove everything from the drive, is that correct?

If so, you don't need an anti-virus, you just need to re-format.  When you do this do not choose "Quick Format."

There are some tools out there that supposedly do a more thorough, or low-level format, search for "flash drive format utility" and maybe find one for the specific brand you have.