Erasing drives to prep for sale?

[Scruffy90]

What is current the best way to prep ssd's and hdd's for sale? I want to erase as much as humanly possible off of the drives

[The_russian]

For hard drives use DBAN, it overwrites the data on the drive with 1s or 0s. For that reason you don't want to use DBAN for SSDs, it will decrease the life of them.

For SSDs, most drive manufacturers like WD and Seagate have a tool that will securely erase the drive. 

[Scruffy90]

Its been years since ive used dban. How long does each erase method take?

[The_russian]

4 minutes ago, Scruffy90 said:

Its been years since ive used dban. How long does each erase method take?

It depends on the size of the drive and how many passes you are doing. I'm not sure how long they take since I usually do it overnight.  

[SupaKomputa]

Just use secure erase from the ssd software, any ssd software should have this.

Or you can just use the wipe function came with every free partition editor.

It would take around 30min - several hours, depending on the drive speed.

6 minutes ago, The_russian said:

It depends on the size of the drive and how many passes you are doing. I'm not sure how long they take since I usually do it overnight.  

Using several passes not recommended, it would hurt the ssd. On HDD it's fine.

[Scruffy90]

13 minutes ago, The_russian said:

It depends on the size of the drive and how many passes you are doing. I'm not sure how long they take since I usually do it overnight.  

Might have to do it. I'd be nuking 2x 2tb HDD's

[The_russian]

8 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Using several passes not recommended, it would hurt the ssd. On HDD it's fine.

I know, OP asked about both HDDs and SSDs, I said in my first response that you shouldn't use DBAN for SSDs. 

[SupaKomputa]

6 minutes ago, Scruffy90 said:

Might have to do it. I'd be nuking 2x 2tb HDD's

Owh ok, but it is neccessary?

Using 1 pass would heavily destroyed all files, even if there's still residue, the file wont be complete so it would just produce errors.

2tb HDD would take 4-5 hours for 1 pass.