Techniques for data scanning and removal for a removable storage device are described herein. An aspect includes a removable storage device comprising an embedded processor configured to boot from an embedded read-only memory (ROM) of the removable storage device. Another aspect includes scanning an internal storage of the removable storage device to identify a first file in the internal storage that matches removal criteria defined in the embedded ROM. Another aspect includes removing the identified first file from the internal storage of the removable storage device.