intel gen2 ssd secure erase question

i want to be able to do a secure erase but i can't seem to be able to. HDD erase doesnt seem to work for me, is there any way at all, kind of like wiper or sanitary erase for indilix based drives. I'm hopefully trying to find some how to do a clean format and secure erase, don't have cdrom's but there must be a method? through bartpe or ubuntu USB?

 

Ubunto USB can do the job.

 

ok but how do i go about secure erasing it clean, what command line or program am i looking for.

edit: and is it really a secure erase, kind of like what hdderase does and wiper and sanitary erase? resetting drive performance to stock.

 

Boot Ubuntu from the USB stick. When the desktop is shown, do a " Suspend". This is needed to set the SSD to " not frozen" state. "Resume" your notebook.
Select Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal. Here you can issue your commands for the secure erase thing. Don't forget to precede the commands with sudo to run them with admin rights. The necessary commands for doing a secure erase are well described at link
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase
Good luck!

 

You don't need to do a secure erase with an SSD. It's actually a HORRIBLE practice because it significantly increases wear on the disk for no benefit. Same with spinning drives, but it's worse with an SSD because of their more limited write lifetimes and wear leveling and such.

edit: Using the ATA secure-erase command is likely fine for the drive because it uses internal logic to the drive for it to work. The method I outline will work on any drive, and is perfectly secure, and doesn't require dancing around the security freeze and setting passwords and such, which scare me because you could brick the drive as well as just erasing the data.

To erase ANY drive, just find a Linux bootable CD or USB stick (Ubunt u as maximinimaus is a decent choice), boot, then just open a terminal and type:

Code:

bash$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

Let it run for 20 minutes or so, however long it takes to dump you back to a command prompt (there won't be any success message... no error means success in Linux), and you're done. This will remove all partitions, filesystems, everything on the drive, and it will be completely unrecoverable even for data recovery shops. So be sure you want to do it.

WARNING: The command above assumes that your internal drive is /dev/sda. Sometimes that is not the case, but it usually is. The worst that will happen is you will hose your bootable Ubuntu USB drive, so make sure you can re-create it if that happens

 

I'm curious, what exactly does this do? I secure erase from time to time, because I don't have trim. I don't intend to do it much anymore since I have me computer where I need it in terms of tweaking and such. Plus created an image of the system. But I secure erase before re-imaging. So what will this command gain me, vs secure erasing given that I have an SSD RAID setup and no trim. Just trying to understand all options.

 

Use the Intel SSD Toolbox. It has a secure erase feature with it. Granted you have to boot off another drive and run the Intel toolbox, but it has a SE feature built in.

 

how would it 'significantly' increase wear of an SSD ? SE is just doing one bulk erase cycle. The current crop of NAND have 5000+ cycle and 1/5000 is not that much. Assuming you do it once a month, it would still be just 12/5000.

And dd all 0's to it is no difference from SE as far as wearing is concerned, may be even more taxing.

Intel's SSD toolbox is nice but not suitable for SE. Not because of the product itself but the 'frozen' state of the device. That boot with ubuntu->sleep->resume->hdparm is a brilliant idea, it should be a sticky.

 

Doesn't it need to be in IDE mode to use hdparm? I was never able to get that to work.

 

haven't tried it myself but hdparm was designed for ATA device and SATA is just an extension of it so I don't think AHCI/IDE mode matters.

Even it does, just a change in BIOS, much easier than live plug/unplug.

 

I tried SE with Ubuntu 10.10 on a HP 8530w with RAID0. I tried Chimpanzee tip(Suspend to get the drives unfrozen, then Resume) and successfully did SE both SSDs. RAID0 was configured in BIOS and I didn't have to change it. I had to rewrite the MBR after the restore, but this was no problem. Only problem was, after Resume the brightness of my display dropped to the lowest level and I wasn't able to increase it. Maybe there's a possibility in Ubunto to change it, I don't know. Maybe it's a HP thing because of the light sensor.

 

clarification:

the suspend/resume is not my tip but Stamatisx's. A very clever way.

 

Sorry, my mistake.