How do you erase the SSD properly?

I got my X300 last saturday and decided to wipe the harddrive and do a fresh W7 install. To do that, I first updated the BIOS from Vista, then set SATA to Compatibility Mode, and booted off a CD containing HDD Erase 4.0.
I chose the Enhanced Secure delete and the application told me it needed to reboot to erase the drive. After the reboot HDD Erase began, gave the drive a (temporary) password and expected to be done in 6 minutes. The whole evening went by and next morning I saw that the erase had failed. Unfortunately, my drive was in a locked state, so the laptop gave the error 2100 Initialization error on HDD0
In BIOS the drive was no longer recognized, so I issued an RMA monday, and received the new drive thursday. Now everything is running great.

I'm planning to erase a friends X300 and install W7, but would prefer not to use a RMA as the way to get a fresh SSD.

Have you done an HDD Erase, and if you have, how did you do it?

 

you should know that youre likely damaging your SSD by doing this, i.e. excessive formatting

 

o btw, what brand is your SSD? was it a samsung that came with the build or an aftermarket SSD

 

SLC memory usually lasts 100k cycles, while MLC lasts 5-10k cycles. A secure erase, similar to a format, will use a single cycle to write all 0's or all 1's across the entire drive. I do not believe that is a cause of concern.

It was a Samsung MCCOE64G8MPP-0VA, which my research shows is SLC based. The new drive is MLC based, but with faster I/O, so that compensates for the change in flash type.

 

I had similar problems but don't know How can format my SSD like factory. I put Windows Vista and used format was correct ? The Disk was like new ?

Thanks

 

so youre saying your formatting of the ssd had no role in the early failure of the ssd. i also doubt that program is optimized for ssds either but rather HDDs,

I dont knw i guess you can try it again on your new drive

 

From what I can read about the program, it uses specific commands built in to recent harddrives, to erase then to a factory-like state. A format command just overwrites with 0's. This is the major difference between the two. I think the failure is related to the drive being left in a locked state, which HDD Erase put the drive in. It takes almost 5 hours filling the entire drive (at 80 MB/sec), so I'm certain the drive didn't die because the flash cells were worn down.

The machine is running great now, so I'd rather find the cause of drive failure, instead of another drive dying. I'm hoping someone who's successfully restored their SSD to factory-like conditions will chime in with instructions

 

Consider posting your question in the hardware section. There are a lot of knowledgeable people who own SSDs and have far more experience with this topic.

 

I've had a similar issue with another ssd, Mtron 3500.
I believe this issue is not ssd-specific, but, for some reason happens with HDD Erase.

I wiped the disk, then my T400 would not recognize the drive.

However, adding it as a secondary drive on an existing Vista installation "magically" solved the problem. I've been using the drive for over a month since.

Weird, huh?

 

I have used secure erase on my SSD (1.8" Samsung 64GB SLC [the original x300 SSD]) without issue.

I followed basically the same method you did:

• I set AHCI to compatibility mode in BIOS.
• Booted into pure DOS using a boot disk (a 16MB MMC card formatted with the HP utility).
• Ran HDD Erase version 4.0.
• Executed the enhanced secure erase command.
• Was told to reboot to clear some BIOS protect flag.
• Entered HDD erase again, executed the enhanced secure erase
• Waited 2-3 minutes, and the SSD was completely blank.
• Went back into the BIOS and set AHCI to performance mode.

I have done this two or three times already with no adverse affects. I really have no idea what you did wrong because you followed almost the exact same procedure.

 

When you wipe the disk, the drive returns to its factory state, i.e. you need to initialize it first in a windows environment, then the drive will be recognizeable. That's how it was for me when I used HDDerase on my Intel drive.

 

"I wiped the disk, then my T400 would not recognize the drive."

Your right Zephir. Of course it will not be recognized. It's not initialized.

Renee

 

Thanks a lot for the detailed guide jonlumpkin. It looks like the same procedure as I did (only CD instead of MMC), so the drive might have had a bad day. Since you have done this several times without adverse effects, I'll give it another try next time I need to reinstall on a SSD

 

Those of you experiencing this should read the HDD Erase manual information at http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseReadMe.txt

Since version 3.2 - Released 6/7/2007

- HDDerase sets user password as "idrive" before performing (enhanced) secure
erase. HDDerase also attempts to unlock drive with passwords from previous
versions.

 

If people are complaining about the drive not being recognized by the system what's the difference if a password was changed or reset on the drive?

 

I believe that you really do not need to use HDDErase if you have a Thinkpad because there is BIOS-support to issue the Secure Erase command to either an SSD or to a FDE HDD.

If you have an SSD in your system, just go to the Security menu in your BIOS, where you should find an option to wipe any installed SSDs (the BIOS autodetects if there is an SSD installed).

 

I forgot to add that if you cannot find the wipe option in the Security menu that you might need to enable it in the BIOS with the help of the following program.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/MIGR-68369.html

 

Darn, my system is too old. Probably because of the Sata 1.5 controller.

 

I'm glad I found this. I am selling my SSD and was just going to use something like Boot and Nuke.