secure delete m.2 ssd

Damian.Byrne · June 17, 2018

Hey guys,

I have my old gaming rig I'm looking to sell. It has an m.2 SSD for a Windows boot drive and I'm looking for how to securely delete everything on it. Thing is, what I've found online tells me that securely deleting an SSD is different to a hard drive. I've found a few tools, but either they require me to run from within Windows (which I obviously can't do in this situation) or are paid (which I'll only do as a last resort). I'd vastly prefer a Linux tool that can be run off of USB flash drive.

Windows7ge · June 17, 2018

I've thought about this. It'd be nice if the m.2 drives advertised that all you need to do is short two contacts to reset the chips on the drive kind of like resetting your BIOS.

I'd probably just hold onto it. M.2 drives are still the latest and greatest thing so having a spare would be a good idea. Just put in the listing that the user needs to supply their own boot drive.

Tabs · June 17, 2018

37 minutes ago, Damian.Byrne said:

Hey guys,

I have my old gaming rig I'm looking to sell. It has an m.2 SSD for a Windows boot drive and I'm looking for how to securely delete everything on it. Thing is, what I've found online tells me that securely deleting an SSD is different to a hard drive. I've found a few tools, but either they require me to run from within Windows (which I obviously can't do in this situation) or are paid (which I'll only do as a last resort). I'd vastly prefer a Linux tool that can be run off of USB flash drive.

All you need is a utility that can perform an ATA or NVME Secure Erase (depending on the type of m.2 drive you have). Some googling should help you find one that fits your needs, or you can probably find one directly from your drive manufacturer.

ATA/NVME Secure Erase is a hardware-level erasure that basically changes the master key for the data on the drive. Once that gets changed, then deleted, the data is still "there" but unrecoverable. The firmware will report all blocks as zeroed. The only way to extract any of the data would be to desolder the NAND and read the chips directly, and at that point all that would be captured is irrecoverable encrypted data.