If you have a removable disk, like a USB memory stick or an external hard disk, you may sometimes wish to completely remove all of its files and folders. You can do this by formatting the disk — this deletes all of the files on the disk and leaves it empty.
Open
Select the disk you want to wipe from the list of storage devices on the left.
Make sure that you have selected the correct disk! If you choose the wrong disk, all of the files on the other disk will be deleted!
In the toolbar underneath the
In the window that pops up, choose a file system
If you use the disk on Windows and Mac OS computers in addition to Linux
computers, choose
Give the disk a name and click
Once the formatting has finished, click the eject icon to safely remove the disk. It should now be blank and ready to use again.
Formatting a disk is not a completely secure way of wiping all of its
data. A formatted disk will not appear to have files on it, but it is
possible that special recovery software could retrieve the files. If you
need to securely delete the files, you will need to use a command-line
utility, such as