Formatting a new USB Flash Drive and old External Hard Drive?

[paulyron]

Hello. If a moderator can close my other thread, I would appreciate it as I want to summarize everything in a new thread to not sound confusing.

 

 

 

I have access to 3 computers right now. All 3 computers right now are clean.
 

1. Cleaned Reinstalled Dell XPS Desktop 10+ Years Old
2. Cheap Windows 11 Laptop Purchased Recently
3. Clean Reinstalled Dell XPS Laptop which is my main machine.



I bought a 32gb usb flash drive that is new. I have an old 1tb external hard drive. This old hard drive, it was connected to a repair shop years ago when they tested an old laptop of mine and told me it stopped working and thus they transferred my files to it. I am pretty certain I did delete all these files on the 1tb hard drive. But I do not remember if I ever formatted it. I am pretty certain I never did a virus scan of it.

Right now I want to make sure both these usb flash drive and the 1tb external hard drive is not only clean of malware... but its blank. But people here say don't bother formatting the 32gb usb flash drive since its new? But any harm in that?



So seems like kaspersky total security... the moment I plug any flash drive or external hard drive into either the desktop or the cheap windows 11 laptop... it would scan because I have the option below checked on. I tested this with an older flash drive.


Action when a removable drive is connected


Quick scan

Detailed scan


It is checked on quick scan. So would it be safer to have it clicked on detailed scan instead especially if I am connecting an external hard drive that was used to connect to a pc shop's computer years ago? That way it would be safer? Thing that has me confused is even if you do detailed scan, it cannot scan password protected files. Is that normal? But it would be better than quick scan right?

 

 

https://support.kaspersky.com/KESWin/11.5.0/en-US/128102.htm

 

 

 

Does it matter which computer I use to format it? Because I definitely will format that old 1tb external hard drive right? Because it could take anywhere from few hours... all the way to 24 hours? So does this mean my old dell xps desktop which is 10+ years old... could take 24 hours to do the format? But a cheap windows 11 laptop I got... could take few hours at most to format? Or is this related to that hard drive or does it involved usb 2.0 or 3.0? I am talking about format and not quick format of course. Also the format would be FAT for the small usb flash drive but NTFS for the external hard drive? I would be doing the full virus/malware scan on the windows desktop though.

 

[Eigenvektor]

3 minutes ago, paulyron said:

I am talking about format and not quick format of course. Also the format would be FAT for the small usb flash drive but NTFS for the external hard drive?

No real reason not to do a quick format, unless you suspect the drive has damaged sectors. If the USB stick is used exclusively on Windows there's not much reason to use anything other than NTFS.

 

https://www.lacie.com/support/kb/explanation-of-the-normal-and-quick-formats-available-on-windows-006222en/

[paulyron]

Why would the small usb flash drive be NTFS?  I read that a flash drive should always be FAT.   What about the TB external hard drive though?  Again I had quite a bit of questions there because I am concerned if I might have malware in that old external hard drive.  So want to know the best way to handle all of this so I could use both of them.

[Eigenvektor]

FAT has the advantage of portability. It works on Windows, Linux, macOS, other devices and BIOS updates. But it has the downside that it doesn't support files larger than 4 GB.

 

You can work around that with ExFAT, but you lose some of that portability. If you don't need portability to begin with, there's no real downside to NTFS.

 

Formatting the drive should get rid of most viruses. The file system entries are gone, so there's no real danger of running an infected executable, because it's no longer accessible.

 

If there's something more exotic like a boot sector virus, your best option is probably an anti-virus tool, since a regular format isn't going to remove it. https://recoverit.wondershare.com/usb-solution/boot-sector-virus.html

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Storage Devices

[paulyron]

8 hours ago, Eigenvektor said:

FAT has the advantage of portability. It works on Windows, Linux, macOS, other devices and BIOS updates. But it has the downside that it doesn't support files larger than 4 GB.

 

You can work around that with ExFAT, but you lose some of that portability. If you don't need portability to begin with, there's no real downside to NTFS.

 

Formatting the drive should get rid of most viruses. The file system entries are gone, so there's no real danger of running an infected executable, because it's no longer accessible.

 

If there's something more exotic like a boot sector virus, your best option is probably an anti-virus tool, since a regular format isn't going to remove it. https://recoverit.wondershare.com/usb-solution/boot-sector-virus.html

 

 

So I plugged the new 32gb usb flash drive into my desktop.  Kaspersky did a detailed scan of it and no threats found.

 

 

The usb does shows 29gb of 29gb free.

 

 

It does have 2 files there on the usb though

                                                          

                                                         Date Modified

SanDiskSecureAccess Folder       April 2017    8:30pm            File Folder

SanDiskSecureAccessV3.1_win    September 2016  10:40pm   Application      8400kb

 

 

 

Inside the SanDiskSecureAccess Folder it shows

 

PDF files of

                                                                    Date Modified

DownloadSanDiskSecureAccess_Mac   Nov 2016  6:18pm                Microsoft Edge PDF Document   353kb

SanDisk_SecureAccess_QSG                 Nov 2016   6:20pm                Microsoft Edge PDF Document   2600kb

 

 

 

Is this normal?  I thought a new usb flash drive wasn't suppose to contain any files inside it?  Or is this normal?

 

 

Also, this usb flash drive brand is NOT a sandisk.  But I read this brand is related to sandisk though.  Its another brand.  Is any of this a concern or is this normal?

 

 

I should do a format or quick format of it?

 

 

 

 

[paulyron]

Well I asked this on another forum earlier and they also said those files are fine. However, someone who is a very reputable poster on that forum mentioned i should first CLEAN it using that list disk, select disk process and I did that. They said first do this, then do a quick format. They said reason is If the USB has multiple partitions, a format will not wipe the other partitions.



That is accurate right?


https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/85819-erase-disk-using-diskpart-clean-command-windows-10-a.html

 

 

My issue now is I'm stuck on step 6. Have you or anyone done this and know what I do now? It tell me I have to initialize the disk and create a simple volume before I do the quick format. The thing is I see the


The disk 5 Removable (D:) 29.06GB Show as Online. Next to it shows 29.06gb unallocated. This is the usb flash drive.


So does that mean I don't need to initialize as it is already online? So just right click on the 29.06GB unallocated and click New Simple Volume?


On that first picture of initialize disk in the tutorial, you see how it is unknown? I assume clicking initialize would make it Online? So that means my disk 5 is already online and I don't need to initialize it right?



Then once the New Simple Volume is done... then quick format?


Because when you go to this pc now and look at that flash drive it shows this below... If you were to click on it... it ask please insert a disk into it...


USB Drive (D)
FAT32



Obviously I made this much complicated than it should be but that person said if I wanted to delete those sandisk files, I should first CLEAN it.

[paulyron]

I created new simple volume and ended up doing a quick format of it. Then I did a regular format of it... that took over an hour. This usb is actually a 3.0 usb. Is that normal for format time on a 32gb flash drive? Again I did this on the dell desktop. I made it FAT32 since its flash drive.


Now for the one tb external hard drive... do the same thing with disk part and CLEAN it? Or CLEAN all? Or just quick format or format it? Again this old external hard drive is an old one that I have used years ago with it having connected to a computer repair shop. I will have kaspersky scan it for viruses. But after this, do i need to do the Clean or Clean all? Or just quick format or format it? Will it take a very long time if I were to format it? Again the 32gb 3.0 new usb flash drive took over an hour to do a full format. The quick format took seconds.


So that means a regular format might take an entire full day? But quick format probably a bit more than an hour or so? Thing is I do want it fully clean so is it worth doing the full format? How long does it take to do a regular format of this big of an external hard drive compared to quick format? For some reason I could picture it taking a full day?

[paulyron]

This is the old external hard drive I have.

https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Portable-External-STEA1000400/dp/B00TKFEEAS/ref=sr_1_12?keywords=seagate+external+hard+drive&qid=1640838044&sprefix=seagate+%2Caps%2C227&sr=8-12

So I just tried to connect the old one tb seagate external hard drive to my desktop. It doesn't appear to read it.

I get message The last USB device you connected to this computer malfunctioned and Windows does not recognize it.

Try reconnecting the device. If windows still does not recognize it, your device may not be working properly.

This is on the dell desktop that I connected it to.

After keep reconnecting it many times it showed up on my pc as a device.  This hard drive is not empty as I thought it was.  Used up like 70gb of the 900gb+.  I then used kaspersky to scan but it kept freezing.  But not only that, it keeps making this screeching sound and another sound.  That sounds like a failed external hard drive right?  After keep unplugging and plugging it, I was able to use kaspersky to scan it more than halfway as it then recognized it but I then pushed it a bit and then it doesn't recognize it anymore again.

So basically this hard drive is no good? .

The last time I connected it was a while back and it never had problems.

Thing is strange because it keep flashing a blue light over and over again.  Then once it doesn't recognize there is a blue light that just stays there.  Is that normal?

Now if I'm able to get it recognized again and do a full kaspersky scan of it and it shows 0 threats... would me formatting it possibly fix this issue?  Or its already a failed drive from these details?