Cannot erase thumb-drive

[Ambrosia7177]

I have a thumb-drive with sensitive information on it, and I want to do a secure format to erase everything so it cannot be recovered.

I am running Mountain Lion and went into Disk Utility, then selected the drive, then chose Security Options, Secure Erase Options = Zero Out Data, then Erase.

OS-X gives me...

"Disk Erase failed

Disk Erase failed with the error:

Couldn't unmount disk."


I thought maybe my old thumb-drive was dying, so I tried the exact same steps on a brand new thumb-drive and the same issue.

 

[chabig]

When you plug it in, manually drag it to the trash. Then try again.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

When you plug it in, manually drag it to the trash. Then try again.

Whaaa

Why would I want to do that?

Besides, when I try you can't do that.

 

[chabig]

Disk Utility said it couldn't unmount the disk. So I asked you to try it manually. Why won't it let you do that? There is only one reason, and that would be that a file is in use from the drive. Try to figure out what that might be. Perhaps quit all running apps except Finder and Disk Utility.

 

[Ambrosia7177]

A reboot fixed things.

 

[rigormortis]

thumb drives like ssd flash drives can never be securely erased of sensitive data, you are encouraged to encrypt the disk and then throw way the key