Erasing USB flash drives?

Addended below.

Bill in Co wrote:
000-222-000 wrote:
"Bill in Co" wrote in message
...
Has anyone come across a program that quick erases a USB flash drive
stick,
so that a simple unerase program doesn't show what files were on it?
(I
don't do this for security reasons, I only do it for my own convenience
(when I'm trying to recall what changes I make on the drive
subsequentially; it's hard to explain :-).

So here is what I have discovered:
"Eraser" doesn't seem to be able to do it for flash dirves, although it
works well on other drives. (I'm just talking about using the basic
erase options here)

The WinXP disk defragger(s) don't do it, either.

BUT the standard Win98/ME defragger DOES do it! And you only have to
run it
for a few seconds to clear traces of any file entries; it doesn't need
to
run to completion.

Clearly the Win98/ME defrag works a lot better in that one regard (on
FAT volumes) than the WinXP defragger(s) do. It somehow erases the
FAT table entries, where the Win XP defraggers don't.



Win98/ME works [like] Eraser;
because the USB flash drive stick is FAT32 volumes..

Yes, but that doesn't explain why the WinXP defragger doesn't do it when
it
is defragging a FAT32 volume, while the Win98/ME one does:

Both the regular Win98/ME defragger AND the the regular WinXP defragger
can
defrag FAT32 volumes, but only the former (the Win98/ME one) seems to
erase any previously erased file table entries (that can be discovered by
running an unerase program).

And the defragger doesn't even have to run to completion to do that (just
briefly start it, and then stop it a couple of seconds later, and that's
done).

(most of the *files* themselves would be unrecoverable since some of their
clusters have likely been reused, but that's not the issue here)

I should also add as an addendum that if you watch the way the Win98/ME and
WinXP defraggers work on a FAT32 volume (with their visual display as they
are defragging), you can see some differences. One notable difference is
the WinXP one seems significantly faster, but I don't think it's moving as
much data around, or seems as thorough, in its actions. (Of course, some
of the speed difference could be due to the faster (WinXP) computer, but I
don't think that's all of it).