ultimate99 Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 I want to sell my ssd but wanted to know what's the best practice to securely wipe it without damaging it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Biscuits Brown MVC Posted March 9, 2017 MVC Share Posted March 9, 2017 I'm not sure this is the best way but when I've retired SSD's I've done this. I first delete what I can from the drive then do a format then a full disc encryption. Remove the drive and call it a day. Any data that remains after the next user formats is encrypted and should be inaccessible. Like I said, may not be the best way but it seems to be secure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mando Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 (edited) 4 hours ago, ultimate99 said: I want to sell my ssd but wanted to know what's the best practice to securely wipe it without damaging it? Parted magic if there is no vendor specific wipe tool. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/securely-erase-ssd-without-destroying/ goretsky 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anibal P Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 Couple of formats are all you really need, it would be cost prohibitive to extract your useless data Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 What make/model is the drive? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andre S. Veteran Posted March 9, 2017 Veteran Share Posted March 9, 2017 https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase goretsky 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 6 minutes ago, Anibal P said: Couple of formats are all you really need, it would be cost prohibitive to extract your useless data You do realize a format does nothing to the existing data on the disk, SSD or HDD. Circaflex 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ultimate99 Posted March 9, 2017 Author Share Posted March 9, 2017 thanks for the suggestions. I ended up wiping the data using EaseUS. It's a PNY CS1311. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andre S. Veteran Posted March 9, 2017 Veteran Share Posted March 9, 2017 2 minutes ago, ultimate99 said: thanks for the suggestions. I ended up wiping the data using EaseUS. It's a PNY CS1311. Hm, difficult to tell how that software actually does it. I would put more trust into the manufacturer's implementation of secure erase than some third-party tool esp. when it doesn't mention how it actually wipes the data. Writing 0s work for HDDs, not so much for SSDs (on top of wasting write cycles). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmeunit Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/securely-erase-ssd-without-destroying/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cork1958 Posted March 9, 2017 Share Posted March 9, 2017 2 hours ago, Mando said: Parted magic if there is no vendor specific wipe tool. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/securely-erase-ssd-without-destroying/ Parted Magic works great! Mando 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted March 9, 2017 Moderator Share Posted March 9, 2017 3 hours ago, Mando said: Parted magic if there is no vendor specific wipe tool. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/securely-erase-ssd-without-destroying/ 1 hour ago, farmeunit said: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/securely-erase-ssd-without-destroying/ Too late, man.... PartedMagic is awesome Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farmeunit Posted March 10, 2017 Share Posted March 10, 2017 8 hours ago, Mindovermaster said: Too late, man.... PartedMagic is awesome Whoops! Sorry, lol. Just saw people going on and on about it... Miss that one early on. Mando 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooky560 Veteran Posted March 19, 2017 Veteran Share Posted March 19, 2017 Most Asus bios'es have a "secure erase" tool that supports a lot of SSDs, your motherboard might also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+LogicalApex MVC Posted March 22, 2017 MVC Share Posted March 22, 2017 I would start with the SSD vendor secure erase tool along with a quick read of the SSD specs to see how it handles this... For instance, my HGST He8 drives natively encrypt everything on the drive (but these are not self encrypting drives*) so when you issue a secure erase command it complies by deleting the encryption key from its on-board ROM effectively locking the data on the drive away without needing to do a DBAN wipe for 3 days. * The drive isn't "self-encrypting" due to it not exposing the encryption key and control up to the OS or storage layer to manage. If you don't issue a secure erase command the key isn't wiped and all data is readable when the drive is connected since the key and its management is internal to the drive. If you want to be absolutely sure... Give the SSD 8+ passes of PRNG data via DBAN and you should be good to go. It will "waste" some write endurance, but most SSDs have enough that this shouldn't be a major issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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