Securely erase an ssd?

[Baldbloke]

Hi folks,
I'll be selling a 2tb ssd shortly. It was in use as my main C drive prior to me getting a 4Tb.
I'm going to sell the 2Tb.
Had a quick look on line and saw there were a few options to securely erase but wondering how effective or fast these might and how it may affect the life remaining on the ssd once I erased it.
Just wondering what is your go-to method of securely cleaning an ssd?

Thank you.

 

[Grimley]

I erase mine in the motherboard Bios if it has that feature.

 

[ivrytwr3]

DBAN (free) or Blancco (paid).

 

[darael]

I've always used Parted Magic to erase my SSD drives. I'm always slightly suspicious of erasing SSD drives, as it only takes a few seconds.

 

[mickyflinn]

I've always used Parted Magic to erase my SSD drives. I'm always slightly suspicious of erasing SSD drives, as it only takes a few seconds.

The quick erase dosent actually erase it marks as clear so data can be overwritten or recovered, a secure erase takes much longer.

 

[Baldbloke]

Thank you kind folks....

I erase mine in the motherboard Bios if it has that feature.

My MSI B550 gaming edge doesn't seem to have that feature. Well, I can't find it if it does.

DBAN (free) or Blancco (paid).

Thank you. Dban looks to be a bit involved to erase what is now a spare drive. I can see those steps would be necessary if it were a C drive but it's now a G drive. I'll try and find something that can run from within windows. Haven't looked at Blancco yet. I'll try to see if there's a free doodah for this. I'm only going to need it once in a blue moon. Besides,whilst I read that Dban will do a good job I wonder if my PC would be essentially unuseable whilst it was wiping the target drive. Not sure at all how long I'd be without access to windows.

I've always used Parted Magic to erase my SSD drives. I'm always slightly suspicious of erasing SSD drives, as it only takes a few seconds.

The quick erase dosent actually erase it marks as clear so data can be overwritten or recovered, a secure erase takes much longer.

Thanks mickeyfinn,

 

[Grimley]

I have a B550 Gaming plus. Secure Erase + is in the Settings/Advanced menu on that. I had a B450 Tomahawk Max before that & it had that too, but Im not certain if the B450 Mortar has it as its in my other PC. MSI have for some reason do not have your board manual available to download so I cant confirm its on your board. I just assumed that it was a feature on most MSI AM4 boards, so I could be wrong.

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

See if whoever manufacturers the drive
Has a software Usually there's a secure erase in it
Though no matter which option you use
Test if you can recover data afterwards
corsair toolbox last time i used which was a while ago
so may be different now
but data was still recoverable
Which is very bad given its the manufacturers software
So people may assume it can't fail to do the job

Thought dban was for mechanical drives
And doing multiple overwrite

I assume by ssd you mean a 2.5 drive
Nvme drives only parted magic worked for me

A secure erase on mechanical drives meant multiple overwrite
Not so on solid state drives
Literally took about a second on mine
Far as I know it sends a higher voltage to the flash
Wiping everything totally
After using parted magic even though it took a second
I couldn't recover anything

As mentioned some motherboard have the function
Not tested that
Samsung magician let's you make a bootable usb to do it
That did work on my Samsung 2.5 drives
But didn't recognise my sm951 nvme drive
So couldn't test that

 

[Baldbloke]

I have a B550 Gaming plus. Secure Erase + is in the Settings/Advanced menu on that. I had a B450 Tomahawk Max before that & it had that too, but Im not certain if the B450 Mortar has it as its in my other PC. MSI have for some reason do not have your board manual available to download so I cant confirm its on your board. I just assumed that it was a feature on most MSI AM4 boards, so I could be wrong.

Thank you Grimley. I had another look in the bios. I found Secure Erase+ this time. (My observational skills are zero. It finds my 2Tb and 4Tb ssd drives but for some reason they are greyed out and it says "not support". Oh well.

@Mcnumpty2323 Yes it is a 2.5" ssd. Did parted magic do a proper secure wipe? There seems to be a little difference of opinion on here whether this just clears the attributes or does in fact do a proper secure erase.
Corsair toolbox soes have a sanitise drive option. Corsair Sanitise does not work on these drives. Says the command is not supported on this drive (Nor on my newer 4Tb drive for that matter.) Dunno why. I've found Corsair toolbox to be a little less than perfect anyway.

Thanks for the input folks. Just to put in context, I'm in no big hurry to do this. Far from stressed about it. I am finding it an interesting excercise now though.

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

Thank you Grimley. I had another look in the bios. I found Secure Erase+ this time. (My observational skills are zero. It finds my 2Tb and 4Tb ssd drives but for some reason they are greyed out and it says "not support". Oh well.

@Mcnumpty2323 Yes it is a 2.5" ssd. Did parted magic do a proper secure wipe? There seems to be a little difference of opinion on here whether this just clears the attributes or does in fact do a proper secure erase.
Corsair toolbox soes have a sanitise drive option. Corsair Sanitise does not work on these drives. Says the command is not supported on this drive (Nor on my newer 4Tb drive for that matter.) Dunno why. I've found Corsair toolbox to be a little less than perfect anyway.

Thanks for the input folks. Just to put in context, I'm in no big hurry to do this. Far from stressed about it. I am finding it an interesting excercise now though.

Yeah software from different manufacturers usually
Will not work on other manufacturers drives
Not sure about your bios erase option
Perhaps it only works on m2 drives?
my new motherboard actually has the option
but not got around to seeing what it can do yet
Parted magic (if you look for the older versions it's still free)
I couldn't recover data from both 2.5 ssds
Or from m2 drives
I tried several recovery softwares too

 

[ivrytwr3]

Mrs gets laptops donated from the general public and I always get them to sort!

So many times all passwords, personal photos (etc) are left, with some saying they did wipe the drives.

I run them all through dban, so easy and much better than most software.

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

Could also try
Diskpart
Clean all (not just clean)

Or encrypt the drive first
Then wipe it
Guessing this is how mobile phones factory reset

Still not convinced about dban for solid state drives
But not personally tried it on solid state
And don't really want to try it on one of my own drives
In case multiple overwrites are bad for drive health

Like I said previously you can try any or all of the suggestions here
Just do a thorough attempt to recover data afterwards

 

[darael]

The quick erase dosent actually erase it marks as clear so data can be overwritten or recovered, a secure erase takes much longer.

I've never been able to recover any data afterwards, though I use the more thorough method which still takes only a few seconds.

Could also try
Diskpart
Clean all (not just clean)

It's worth noting that the clean all command will use unnecessary write cycles, when Parted Magic can do the same job just as thoroughly.

The clean command:

Removes any and all partition or volume formatting from the disk with focus. On master boot record (MBR) disks, only the MBR partitioning information and hidden sector information are overwritten. On GUID partition table (GPT) disks, the GPT partitioning information, including the Protective MBR, is overwritten; there is no hidden sector information.

The clean all command:

Specifies that each and every sector on the disk is zeroed, which completely deletes all data contained on the disk.

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DiskPart Command-Line Options - Microsoft Learn