How to delete deleted files on SSD

[Driver170]

I’m curious to find out how do i wipe my SSD deleted files? I still want to keep all my data on C but would like to wipe everything clean thats been deleted in the recycle bin?

 

[mrjimphelps]

The best way to permanently delete the deleted files is to run a program which writes random 1s and 0s to the empty space on the drive. Here is information on programs which can be used for this purpose:

https://www.lifewire.com/free-data-destruction-software-programs-2626174

 

[Driver170]

Fantastic. but will CCleaner also do the trick? you have settings for simple overwrite 1 pass etc and wipe free space drives?

 

[mrjimphelps]

CCleaner will be fine for this purpose IF you don't have the hacked version:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3225407/security/ccleaner-downloads-infected-malware.html

 

[gldndragn]

You do NOT want to do too many write operations to an ssd. You will shorten its life span. Use this program. It call the native trim command to flush the "deleted" data from the drive. It is the safest way for ssd.

View attachment ForceTrim.zip

Here is a quote for your information:

TicksOnTech: TRIM For the masses

5. Although the TRIM command should work automatically with Windows 7, it sometimes can be a bit “lazy”. For those of you who have Windows 7 with SSD and feel the drive could use some freshen-up, check out a little app called ForceTrim. This tool is not supported with RAID. ForceTrim will force the drive to go over all free flash cells and use the TRIM command on every cell that is marked for deletion. It should work on any vendor. Make sure you run ForceTrim as Administrator.



http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=99467

Afterwards, since you've likely been running without TRIM for some time, you should probably get and run the ForceTrim.exe tool, which can be found by Googling "SSD trim tool" or "ForceTrim.zip". It is a very simple and completely safe utility that merely creates a few large file entries on the ssd in order to fill the drive's free space, and then deletes them. This, assuming TRIM is enabled on your system, will cause your OS to issue trim commands to the ssd to cleanse the space those large files took up (Specifically, all the free space). After running this, the ssd should be managing this cleanup completely on its own in the background, and may take a few minutes. You really have no way of knowing, other than just coming back later and running a benchmark to see if your write performance has increased. I wouldn't bother, to be honest, as you should probably be more concerned with system stability right now than write performance.


This info is from here; ForceTrim: AN EXCELLENT LITTLE PROGGIE THAT WORKS! | The SSD Review and Technology X Forums

 

[gldndragn]

More info for you.

Don't zero-fill an SSD, ever. As a minimum, this will wear out some of the SSD's write lifespan for little or no benefit. In an extreme worst-case scenario, you might put the SSD's controller into a (temporarily) reduced performance state.

From this source:

Repeatedly overwriting the entire disk with multiple repetitions can successfully destroy data, but because of the Firmware Translation Layer (FTL), this is considerably more complicated and time-consuming than on traditional hard disk drives. Based on their results, it is an unattractive option
Your best option, secure erase via full disk encryption:

A few modern SSD's can use full-disk encryption -- examples are Intel's new 320 drives and some Sandforce 2200-series drives. These drives can be securely erased in a simple and fast way, without any drive wear. The drive uses AES encryption for all data written, so a secure erase simply means deleting the old AES key, and replacing it with a new one. This effectively makes all the 'old' data on the drive unrecoverable.

However, Intel's secure erase isn't easy to automate. AFAIK it has to be done from Intel's Windows GUI app, it can only be run on an empty non-boot drive and so forth. See page 21 and onwards in Intels docs.

 

[Driver170]

Very much appreciated guys for helping me out here. I only need to do this ONCE don’t think i’ll ever need to do this operation again. So doing it once is this ok?

 

[gldndragn]

Very much appreciated guys for helping me out here. I only need to do this ONCE don’t think i’ll ever need to do this operation again. So doing it once is this ok?

Yes. The OS SHOULD do this on its own anyway....but you can use this to "force" the trim function as needed

 

[Driver170]

I used that force trim