Partition Wiping and Free Disk Space

Situation: If I have a newly acquired USB Flash Drive and I want to wipe it with BootIt Bare Metal to make sure that it is Malware Free.

BootIt Bare Metal shows the existing Partition along with 2 MB of unpartitioned disk space. In the past I have selected the existing partition, Delete, Delete MBR, Wipe and Yes. Does this truely wipe the entire USB Flash Drive? Should I instead select Wipe Drive which has a minimum of a two step wipe operation?

It seems like any type of drive that you partition always has a little left-over unpartitioned disk space. Why does there always seem to be a small amount of left-over unpartitioned space?

Thanks in Advance.

 

Hi TheKid7

The following is a developer response to a similar question from this Gparted thread: http://gparted-forum.surf4.info/viewtopic.php?id=16449

"Free space (unallocated) must be left on the drive to store the structure used for the partition table. Hence you will always have "free space" on a drive, even if the drive is fully used. In the case of an MSDOS partition table, space must be reserved for the Master Boot Record, and also for each Extended Boot Record in front of each logical partition."

The remaining responses may also be helpful.

Hope this helps in some way.

Jim