I found an old flash drive and wanted to see what had been saved on it. I want to make sure that the pictures that were on the flash drive aren't hiding somewhere in the COMPUTER's memory. How can I be sure they have been completely erased?Low level format will overwrite the contents of the unit.


Right click the drive from within File Explorer and choose Format and unstick Quick Format.Do I need the flash drive to do this? Hang on guys - I think there's a misunderstanding here. mwine79 wants to make sure the PIX aren't on the hard drive or "in the computer's memory". A low level format of the hard drive (or ANY format of the hd, for that matter) will erase EVERYTHING on the drive. If that's what you want to do, fine. But if all you want to do is make sure the photos aren't on the drive, just do a search on the drive and if you find them, DELETE them. If you want to make sure they aren't in the computer's "memory", just reboot the system. A common misnomer is "memory" when you mean hard drive and vice versa, so I'm not 100% certain what you mean. Anyway, the above should ANSWER your question either way.+1 with Allan's comment - DO NOT low level format your system hard drive.


The only drive you mention is the flash drive and that's the only drive I was referring to, but it never hurts to double check these things.We will PROBABLY know after it's too late...