How to reformat my SSD (Intel SSD Toolbox Secure Erase problem)

[VincentVolaju]

So Ive had my Intel SSD 335 Series 240gb for a while now, and there is just tons of crap on it and I figured since I never reformatted it before I might as well do it now and just clean everything up etc. I was always told the way you reformat an SSD is with a Secure Erase feature on a program. Well I just went to do that in the Intel SSD Toolbox, but at the bottom of the Secure Erase part it says "The selected drive has a partition. The partition must be removed in order to execute this feature." And the "Erase" button is grayed out.

 

Just wondering what am I supposed to do exactly in order to reformat this thing? Not sure if this info will be helpful but I currently have 2 drives I am using, my main drive which is this SSD that I have my Windows 7 on along with the games I play and such. Then I have a 1TB HDD that I keep all my media stuff on like movies, videos, songs, pics etc.

 

So what do I have to do?

[Samdb]

@VincentVolaju

 

Unfortunately Intel SSD Toolbox only allows you to use the Secure Erase feature on a secondary drive, as I presume you are using it as your main drive you will be unable to use the Toolbox to format your drive, however there are other ways of formatting an SSD. Make a backup of your SSD before you format the drive as something may go wrong during the process and may cause data loss. The Intel site has a selection of tools and more knowledge available which can be viewed here.

 

Sam,

Intel Response Squad member

[R4STABAN]

If it's a secondary disk drive

 

open command prompt

 

diskpart

list disk

select disk X (put the number corresponding to your SSD)

clean

exit

 

that will remove all data about partitions (will not overwrite anything - now you can run secure erase)