Aug 4

How to Clean a USB Flash Drive from Viruses

How to Clean a USB Flash Drive from Viruses

So, how can you clean a USB flash drive from viruses?

1) Checking a flash drive using an alternative antivirus

To begin you can use some kind of antivirus that does not need to be installed (they are also called scanners, online scanners).

It is enough to download such products to your PC and run a system check. They can work in parallel with your installed antivirus and will not interfere with it in any way.

What to choose:

  1. ESET’s Free Online Scanner is an anti-virus utility that does not need to be installed. Allows you to run an anti-virus system scan in a matter of minutes (including selecting any disks, flash drives, memory cards to scan).
  2. McAfee Security Scan Plus is a very famous software for quick scanning of your computer. It can work in parallel with your installed antivirus (there is no point in removing it after checking).

2) Check with special utilities

No matter how good your regular antivirus is (if it is installed on the system), it cannot “see” and recognize some types of threats (for example, adware, AdWare, SpyWare, TrojanSpy, TrojanDownloader, etc.).

To check your system and flash drive, you must use special utilities.

3) The radical way: formatting the drive

Another way to completely remove viruses from a flash drive (and with them all files from it, be careful!) is to format the drive.

To start formatting, just open “My Computer”, right-click on the flash drive and select “Format …” from the menu.

4) Prevention: how to protect yourself from a new virus

  1. Install one of the modern antiviruses on the system, and update it regularly.
  2. Configure your system so that auto-launch of applications from plug-in CD/DVD and USB drives is disabled.
  3. If as you work, you often have to connect your USB flash drive to other computers, then before opening any files from it on your system, check it for viruses.
  4. Those documents that you carry on a flash drive would not be superfluous to have on your hard disk (such a copy can help if the flash drive is lost, or the virus irrevocably spoils the files on it).

Picture Credit: Unsplash

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