Securely wipe m.2 drives for sale.

Hi all,

I have a M.2 raid setup and wondering if there is a way to securely erase them and then reinstall windows before sale.

Cheers jim

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Yeah; of course it's possible.

Are you running Win10? Download the ISO from MS directly and when you install it and connect to the 'net, it will activate automatically for you.

 

Hi,

Sorry I'm a little lost how this will securely wipe my drives?

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I personally always use full-disk encryption on my drives. So, in order to wipe sensitive data, I delete it, then decrypt the drive, and completely fill it with junk data e.g. with h2testw. Quick format after that, leave the disk alone for a few hours for TRIM & GC as a courtesy to new owner - and the disk is ready for sale. You don't have to remove Windows unless you're separating the drives in this scenario.

 

You would still have to securely wipe them... of course.

I offered how you could reinstall Win10 on it and have it properly activated.

If this didn't help; just think of the post as a free bump for you.

 

So can I full disk encrypt with data on it? No I literally want to return it back to stock for resale, as in the whole machine.

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@benson881 you can always encrypt system & data with Bitlocker. I advise you to:
1. fully encrypt the drives
2. remove overprovisioning if there is any
3. delete your sensitive data, including stuff like browsing history, wi-fi passwords, etc
4. fill the disks with some junk data, e.g. with h2testw which will do the job automatically
5. delete the junk data
6. decrypt the drive
7. run Reset this PC from settings
8. restore overprovisioning if you want

 

Thanks mate. I will give it a try this weekend. Can't use bitlocker as only have home version. Have to find an alternative

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@benson881 you can probably skip the encryption part if you end up doing 4 & 5 more than once.

On side note, h2testw puts a lot of stress on SSDs and may cause them to overheat, so copying groups of some large files e.g. movies while watching the temps and giving SSDs a rest from time to time may a better approach if they tend to run too hot under sustained load.

 

I had dramas trying to encrypt in raid so I've split the drives. Hopefully samsung magician will recognise them and encrypt them that way now.

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