Does Secure Erase Completely Erase An SSD

[goodwill]

Dear SevenForums,
Thank you for your help


Hoping that what I have just done completely erased my SSD before I put Home Premium on it


Here is what I did


Secure Erased the SSD


Formatted it (I think I formatted it with GParted - and I dont remember an option for 'fully formatting' as opposed to 'quick formatting')



Loaded Home Premium on it




My understanding is that 'fully formatting' rather than 'quick formatting' an HDD completely erases the material on an HDD


Considering what I have described above do you think my SSD was completely erased before I put Home Premium on it


All thoughts welcome
Best
goodwill

 

[samuria]

If your using OEM tools to secure erase it will wipe it clean it would depend on each maker if it then formats it most wont

 

[goodwill]

Thank you, samuria



OEM tools

Not sure what OEM tools is

Used Secure Erase on the SSD - is this an OEM tool

Formatted using GParted




Partitioned during Home Premium installation

Are you saying you think that I did in fact completely wipe the SSD - hoping so

Best,
goodwill

 

[dg1261]

In theory, if properly implemented by the drive manufacturer, SECURE ERASE and a full FORMAT should achieve the same result, so I think you should be safe.

The FORMAT command is external to the drive itself, in which whatever is executing the command (such as GParted, Windows Disk Management, or whatever) issues commands to the drive firmware to write 1's or 0's to specifically requested sectors on the drive. A quick format just overwrites relevant sectors, while a full format recurses through each and every sector on a drive or partition. (That's why it takes longer.)

In contrast, SECURE ERASE is an internal ATAPI command, native to the drive firmware. IOW, all you (or whatever utility you're using) has to do is issue one command -- SECURE ERASE -- and the firmware will then take over and erase all cells.

Note this has some relevant ramifications for SSDs.

One is that SSDs usually contain some hidden over-provisioning area, which are cells that are constantly being swapped in and out of active service as they are cleaned and reset for reuse. The hidden cells are not visible to external utilities, so Windows and GParted are not able to specifically address those cells for zeroing. If you had sensitive data in previously active cells that happen to temporarily be in the hidden area when the external utility passes by, they could be overlooked and thus potentially be recoverable by, say, forensic investigators. (Note I'm not talking about hackers who know how to use the undelete command, I'm talking about 3-letter government agencies that might confiscate your drive and take it apart.)

Since the SECURE ERASE command is internal to the firmware, the manufacturer should be able to make it erase the hidden area, too.

That's the theory, anyway. Since SECURE ERASE is implemented in firmware, it depends on how accurately the manufacturer has implemented the feature in its firmware. There are studies that have shown not all manufacturers do it properly, and evidently some even ignore the command entirely, even though it's part of the industry's ATAPI standards.

So the bottom line is nobody can tell you with 100% certainty what was actually done to your drive, as there has been no definitive audit of the firmware of every model of every drive on the market.

The chances are your efforts were good enough and you're likely safe. If you're still worried, though, you might want to try running some file recovery software and see if it discovers anything potentially recoverable. Whether that's worth the effort depends on what it is you're worried about.

 

[file3456]

As far as I know, and this may only pertain to platters, is that using a quick format with the OS doesn't take the time to look for any hard drive errors. While a full format (slow) will check the drive for errors thus the slow speed at which it formats. So if you have a new hard drive you probably could do a quick format and not worry about checking for any bad sectors of the hard drive with a full format. For me personally I always chose the full format (slow) just to make absolutely sure Windows doesn't report any hard drive errors along the way of the format. And I also do this for USB sticks, etc.

And as far as a know, a format DOES NOT delete any data on a drive. It only deletes the partition table for the drive. I once formatted a hard drive and then used a program and recover the drive after the fact and the data was still all there like nothing ever happened. Now this was for a platter. Perhaps flash-based medium has a something there in the firmware where if a full format or any format is used the data is wiped. Or at least you think so. I can tell you right now the FBI has great tools to recover hard drives.

For absolute data sanitation the ONLY tool that I know of that will "wipe" a SSD is PartedMagic. Now whether the secure erase command is the same thing I'm not entirely sure. I should email the creators of PartedMagic and ask them what makes their product so different versus that of the secure erase command. I may be surprised to find out it's better at data sanitation or something. I do use PartedMagic and the Clonezilla software in it to clone my encrypted computers. Clonezilla was the only software I know of that could do a 1:1 clone of encrypted data. And you don't need PartedMagic for Clonezilla. It's freely available on their website. It just so happens PartedMagic (at least my version) includes it.

Never use DBAN or something similar to wipe a SSD. You'll end up writing an enormous amount of data to a drive that while has a large write cycle still in fact is finite.

If you want to be absolutely sure your data is gone from a SSD, then just open the drive and take a drill bit and drill a hole in the center of each memory chip on the board back and front. Chuck it right in the trash. It's now completely sanitized.

 

[Snick]

OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer)
Here's a good article with links to SSD Manufacturers
How to Securely Erase Your SSD Without Destroying It

 

[file3456]

From the article:

Remember, if you’re not selling or donating the drive and just want to destroy the data, you can always smash it up with a giant hammer. Of course, this will obliterate your data, as well as the drive itself. But you will securely erase your data in the process.

This is not necessary and you might miss a memory chip or in fact the memory chips on the back of the board. As I said, and I'll quote myself.

If you want to be absolutely sure your data is gone from a SSD, then just open the drive and take a drill bit and drill a hole in the center of each memory chip on the board back and front. Chuck it right in the trash. It's now completely sanitized.

This is by far the easiest and most secure. It's not hard to open an SSD drive and you'll be quite surprised to see it's just a circuit board with a bunch of memory chips.

Also, the article says hitting the drive with a hammer "securely erases the drive." That's not even proper terminology. If you smash the drive with a hammer or use a drill bit on each memory chip, you're not erasing data, you're destroying it. Erasing data would mean from a program or command given perspective.

 

[goodwill]

Dear F22 Simpilot, Snik, dg1261, samuria,


Much appreciation for your time



and detailed responses


All best
goodwill