A solid-land drive (SSD) is one of the all-time upgrades yous can make to your PC. An SSD was once a merchandise-off between disk space, cost, and the speed boost, only big capacity SSDs are at present cheaper than ever.

Like other types of wink retentivity, you tin only write to an SSD so many times, which presents an result if you want to wipe the solid-state drive clean. Using a regular tool tin can damage the SSD, reducing its lifespan.

So, how do you securely erase an SSD without dissentious the drive?

Does Secure Erase Damage Your SSD?

Generally speaking, you should never have to perform any maintenance on your solid-state drive. SSDs are designed with self-sufficiency in mind, using a series of algorithms and neglect-safes that the manufacturer puts in place to maximize drive life and ensure information is discarded correctly.

What Is SSD Wear Levelling?

The first protection comes in the form of vesture leveling, designed to evenly distribute stored data between SSD blocks to ensure even wear. Clothing leveling is one of the major differences between a regular magnetic hard drive and a solid-country bulldoze.

A traditional hard drive stores files in concrete locations on a magnetic platter. The operating system indexes the file locations in a file organization and accesses the data using a mechanical arm. Whereas a solid-state bulldoze is a course of wink memory, similar a USB pollex drive—simply with a much larger capacity.

Instead of writing to a location on a physical disc, an SSD writes the data to a block. Each write procedure causes the memory to degrade or "wear."

While the SSD uses a file arrangement to communicate data storage locations to the host system, information technology likewise re-shuffles the data to ensure even wear beyond all retentivity blocks. Changes fabricated for wear leveling record to a divide file map.

In other words, SSDs do not utilise any physically indexable locations, and software cannot specifically target sectors on the deejay. Basically, your computer has no way of telling "where" that data was just copied to.

What Is SSD Trim, and Should You Use It?

Your SSD constantly moves data around to comply with article of clothing leveling, ensuring all blocks wear at an fifty-fifty rate. What that does mean, however, is that some common secure file deletion methods don't work equally you would expect. At least, not how they work on a magnetic hard drive.

Solid-land drives use a specific command to keep on meridian of file deletion, known every bit TRIM. The TRIM command marks the blocks of data the SSD is no longer using, ready for wiping internally. In bones terms, this ways when y'all delete a file in your operating system, the TRIM command wipes the space and makes it available for apply.

The adjacent time your operating arrangement attempts to write something to that space, it can practice so immediately. Simply put, your SSD manages your discarded data.

The divergence in how an SSD handles data deletion and vesture leveling is why regular secure drive wiping programs are not recommended for an SSD. You will somewhen write 1s and 0s to the bulldoze, but information technology will crusade a meaning amount of clothing to the drive memory in the procedure.

Considering the drive writes all new incoming data to various blocks, depending on its needs, merely the drive knows where this information is written. So, secure deletion tools really harm SSDs by performing an unnecessary number of additional writes.

For a much more detailed look at TRIM and garbage collection, you should read our article on the usefulness of TRIM on modern SSDs.

How to Securely Erase an SSD

Right now, you lot're probably thinking, "How do I securely wipe my SSD, and then?" Thankfully, it is even so possible to securely wipe your SSD using software and without damaging the drive. The deviation is that instead of deeply wiping all information from the drive, an SSD "resets" to a clean memory state (not factory state, which implies at that place is no drive wearable!).

The "ATA Secure Erase" command instructs the drive to flush all stored electrons, a procedure that forces the drive to "forget" all stored information. The command resets all available blocks to the "erase" land (which is also the state the TRIM command uses for file deletion and block recycling purposes).

Importantly, the ATA Secure Erase command does not write anything to the SSD, unlike a traditional secure wipe tool. Instead, the control causes the SSD to use a voltage spike to all available flash memory blocks in unison. The procedure resets every available block of space in a unmarried performance, and the SSD is "clean."

Using the ATA Secure Erase control does utilise a whole plan-erase cycle for your SSD. Then yes, it does cause a small corporeality of wear, but it is negligible compared to a traditional secure wipe tool.

Secure Erase Your SSD Using a Manufacturer Tool

Most manufacturers supply software to use with their SSD. The software usually includes a firmware update tool, and secure erase tool, and perhaps a drive cloning option. While it's impossible for MakeUseOf to check the software of every manufacturer, you tin can find a listing of tools for the major SSD manufacturers below.

  • Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox
  • Toshiba OCZ SSD Utility
  • Corsair SSD Toolbox
  • Samsung Magician SSD Tool
  • SanDisk SSD Dashboard
  • Crucial SSD Storage Executive
  • Western Digital SSD Dashboard
  • Seagate SeaTools bootable SSD utility

The SSD manufacturer's direction app is the outset place to check for a secure erase tool. Even so, some manufacturers do non include the ATA Secure Erase command every bit an choice. Furthermore, in some cases, your SSD model may not back up the command. If that is the instance with your SSD, movement to the adjacent section.

Secure Erase Your SSD Using Parted Magic

Although the SSD manufacturer tool may come with a secure erase tool, many experts advise using Parted Magic instead. Indeed, Parted Magic features every bit an essential tool to go along in your PC repair USB toolkit.

Parted Magic is a whole Linux distribution featuring all manner of deejay erasing and partition managing tools. The tool does toll $11, just you take admission to the suite forever, whenever you lot demand it, and it's 1 of the all-time means to deeply erase an SSD.

Parted Magic is a bootable Linux environment, meaning you install it to a USB bulldoze and boot from there. Here'due south a quick listing of exactly what y'all demand to exercise:

  1. Download Parted Magic and create a mountable USB drive using Unetbootin.
  2. Kicking the drive and cull pick 1, Default Settings.
  3. Once booted head to Start (bottom-left) > Organization Tools > Erase Disk.
  4. Choose the Internal:Secure Erase command writes zeroes to entire data area option, then ostend the drive you lot want to erase on the adjacent screen.
  5. If y'all are told the drive is "frozen," you will need to click the Sleep button and echo this process until you tin proceed further. If your drive indicates a password requirement, get out the password every bit "Zip."
  6. Confirm that you have read and understood the risks, then striking Yep to erase your drive.

Secure Erase Your SSD Using PSID Revert

At that place is a 3rd method to erase your SSD deeply. The Physical Security ID (PSID) revert finer cryptographically erases the content of your SSD, then resets it to the erase country. However, this method only works if you lot cannot deeply erase the drive due to full deejay encryption.

ssd with psid

A PSID Revert wipes the entire drive. This procedure too works if the drive is hardware encrypted only not encrypted using third-political party software. Find out if your drive supports PSID Revert by completing an internet search for "[your drive name] PSID Revert."

Securely Erasing an SSD for Mac Users

Attempting to boot Parted Magic on a Mac can crusade some bug. The issues relate to the method you use to create the Parted Magic bootable USB drive. Some burning programs piece of work fine, while other options never seem to work.

A forum post on the Apple Stack Exchange provides details on how to boot Parted Magic on a Mac, with some handy pictures, likewise. Y'all should besides check out our guide on how to create a bootable USB for a Mac—but recall, your mileage may vary!

Other forum posts advise that if you lot experience problems with your Mac SSD and it is still under warranty, you should allow Apple accept a look.

You Tin can Wipe Your SSD Clean

Wiping an SSD clean requires different tools to a regular difficult drive. Now y'all know the options, you can securely erase your SSD earlier selling or altruistic it. Manufacturer secure erase options are handy, but the Parted Magic secure erase option is best.

Remember, if y'all're not selling or donating the bulldoze and only want to destroy the data, yous can ever smash it upwardly with a giant hammer. Of course, this will obliterate your data, as well equally the bulldoze itself. But you volition deeply erase your data in the process.

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Almost The Author

Gavin Phillips (1047 Articles Published)

Gavin is the Junior Editor for Technology Explained, a regular contributor to the Actually Useful Podcast, and a frequent production reviewer. He has a degree in Contemporary Writing pillaged from the hills of Devon, and more than a decade of professional person writing feel. He enjoys copious amounts of tea, lath games, and football.

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