Help Hard reset hasn't wiped my data

[Pinmac1]

I have finally bitten the bullet and wiped my Note following the instructions via the Android Recovery Console given by NeoGrandizer on the Note 2 forum. I really wanted to go from scratch so have reformatted the SD card.

All went very quickly and seemingly well so I have set about rebuilding the phone with my favourite apps. When I checked my USB (internal) storage I was surprised to see that it still contained my old data, photos, videos, music and 6.82Gb of Miscellaneous files. I see that there is an option to Format USB storage but I really thought that this would have been done by the factory reset?

Just to be clear, I would like to get back to a state with absolutely nothing on the device so that I start absolutely clean. If I need to do another reset to achieve this then I'd rather do it now before I rebuild. Or can I just do the Format USB storage?

Can anyone shed any light on this please?

 

[SiempreTuna]

A factory reset will only clear 'data' - things like the contacts and calendar - and settings, it specifically does NOT remove files like photos, MP3s, documents etc.

To remove those you need to delete them manually. Easiest ways to do this are either to connect to a PC or install an file manager or and go through the file structure and delete things you don't want.

Alternatively, you could use associated apps to delete - e.g. gallery for pictures, music player for MP3s - but that's probably going to be more of a pain as you'll probably have to delete the files one-by-one.

I'd definitely use the PC option, if possible.

 

[Pinmac1]

Wow! That's really surprising. My assumption was that a factory reset literally set it back to how it was when it came out of the factory. When you sell or pass on a phone, you are advised to reset it to factory settings but that's not much good if it leaves the data on it! Part of my reason for wanting to reset was that it was all so cluttered so it's going to be a pain to have to delete it all manually. Thanks for the quick response though.

 

[Pinmac1]

Just an update to say that I realised that the normal way to reset does clear the USB storage so, as I'd only re-downloaded a few apps, I hard reset again via Settings and again via the method I'd used first. This cleared the USB storage but, weirdly, the apps were still there and some of the settings I had adjusted stayed as I'd set them.
I've carried on reinstalling apps etc and all seems well. I haven't installed anything on the SD card yet, although I'll probably put music and videos etc on it. Seems faster but that could be because I haven't got so many apps on it.