Deleting files in your USB flash drive. Is it empty, yet?

Well, when you delete files in your USB flash drive using Commad + Delete or drag them to the Trash, the file is actually not being deleted, but instead it is being hidden. Wow, but that’s true. So from now on, if you really want to erase data from the USB flash drive, make sure you empty the Trash as well, or someone can see your hidden files when they plug it in to a PC.

Or for the paranoids (and it is recommended once in a while), go to Disk Utility (Press Command + Spacebar and type disk utility + enter). Select the USB flash drive on the left side of the panel, and click on the Erase tab and choose ‘Erase Free Space…” You can select which method to erase (reclaim) the “empty space”.

Remember that the ‘Erase’ button on your Disk Utility window is a whole different kind of story, so do not press that one, unless you want to reformat and erase the whole data.

And remember that your Volume Format will probably be MS-DOS (FAT) file system which is fine since you might bring this thing into a friend’s PC :). So my suggestion is that don’t use this ‘Erase’ button if you don’t know what you’re doing. (I learned the hard way, I reformatted the USB flash drive to MS-DOS (FAT) using my Mac on the other day, and now the PC won’t recognize it and it needs to be reformatted under PC :()