Best utility to secure erase Raid SSD

Hi guys, I'm sorry if I miss some post about it but what is the best utility to secure erase our Sony VPCZ1 Raid SSD?

HDDerase 4 and 3.3 don't work for me. I've got stucked at the select disk screen. The program don't list the available disks.

Thanks

 

I heard you could try zeroing the disks using the 'dd' command in Linux. You can create a USB stick with Ubuntu on it, boot that, then run 'dd'. I haven't tried that myself though, perhaps you can try and report back

 

I'm more a Windows user I'm looking for a DOS (bootable USB) solution.

But if you have a guide on how to use this bb with Ubuntu please send me and I'll give a try.

 

Here's an interesting thread:
How to zero-fill a hard drive??

Someone in that thread said that zeroing does not mean irrecoverable First time I heard of that... Anyway, in that thread there's a reference to the DBAN tool, it may be worth a shot.

For Linux, install Ubuntu onto a USB stick (or CD), run the Live version (which doesn't require installation onto hard drive), then run the dd command given in the thread within a Terminal. You'll need to figure out the device you're trying to zero...

 

Zeroing an SSD I presume is less recoverable than an HDD.

 

Yes, but why zero a disk? better do a few passes of random data:

Code:

# dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda

I think you should also not set a blocksize for dd, it might decrease randomness.

 

"Secure Erase" is not the same as "securely erasing".
"Secure Erase" is a command you give to the drive itself, which causes it to reset every block to unused and writeable, which means that every block on the drive now can be written to at full speed without an expensive copy-erase-write cycle.

Zeroing a drive won't do this. It will only get rid of the data, but the sectors will still be marked as "dirty". And, in fact, it's worse than nothing, as after a full zeroing, you have ensured that every single sector on the drive will be seen as written to.

In Linux, you don't want to use dd. You want to use hdparm with either --security-erase or --trim-sector-ranges.

 

I guess the hdparm method is better than the zeroing procedure you mentioned earlier: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/480232-erase-tools-vaio-z-but-not-recovery.html#post6220072

Did something happen in the meantime to cause you to change your mind?

 

No, that's still the preferred method to get rid of data so no-one can recover them.
When someone says "secure erase", it's usually because they want to get the drive back into shape without TRIM. dd doesn't do anything for that.

Recap:
If what you want to do is ensure that no-one can recover your data: Overwrite it. dd is a fast and reliable method.
If what you want to do is the "secure erase" operation that revitalises a drive that has seen a lot of use: Use a utility like hdparm (or wiper.exe for Windows, unless I remember wrong) to "erase" every sector.

 

And correct me if I'm wrong but on an SSD a single pass overwrite is effective, correct? I thought the multipass processes were geared toward magnetic discs due to it's "memory effect".

 

Here's a thread that steps through the process:
https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

 

To be honest, a single pass is enough for HDs too. Yes, it's theoretically possible to restore magnetic data that has been overwritten only once, but even the large data restoration companies like IBAS can't do it if you ask them to.
Perhaps someone in Arlington or Kremlin's Sixteenth Directorate have the ability, but if so, there's no paper trail that they've actually done it.

 

Thanks for all the replies. I'm gonna try KillDisk right now and if it not work, I'll try the Linux LiveCD.

Actually what I want is perform a Secure Erase to get back my factory SSD speed. I'm not woried about recovery and really clean every single bit from my SSD (I'm not selling my laptop)

So hope that everyone understand.

UPDATE:
I think I'm not going to perform the KillDiks. Found this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/465962-z-series-ssd-question-raid-trim-concerns-9.html

There are two perspectives:

1.The erasure of data. This is what the Sony cleaner, KillDisk, CCleaner and DoD-grade data eradication programs do. This is mainly useful for magnetic drives for "secure deletion." It is secure in that the data can't be read again. For SSD's without TRIM, this is just more writes. In fact, the I first heard of KillDisk was from a post at the OCZ forums where it made a guy's SSD slow down. I purchased it today for this very reason
2.Programs like HDDErase perform a "SECURE ERASE" command. For magnetic drives, it resets the LBA, or the drive's map of where data blocks are located on a disk. Added with multiple overwrites on all blocks, the drive's data is truely erased. For SSD's, this LBA reset effectively sets all the blocks to "erased" status, returing the drive to a factory-like condition.

This is what I'm looking for: Only the LBA reset to set all the blocks to erased - but HHDErase doesn't work.
Anyone with Sony Z1 Samsung Raid SSD made it work?

 

That's what I'm not understanding: the Samsung drives include garbage collection capability, independent of the Intel RST and RAID0, and performance so far has been observed not to deteriorate. Are you interested in squeezing every single last bit of performance from the drives?

 

Thanks TofyTurkey, in my early research on this forum show me that we need to Secure Erase the disk to get back the performance. Now I've see that overtime we get the performance back doing nothing

Thanks ZoinksS2k.