Selling my SSD's. How do I make sure they are completely wiped?

[minimalist]

Is there recommended software?  I know SSD's are different than HDD's

[aisle9]

Do a full, slow format in Windows. It'll take a long time, but a couple of those back to back will more or less kill everything on the drive beyond recognition.

[RUWO_builder]

Download a drive nuke for ssds and run That 

[Litargirio]

In the case of an SSD, it is enough to zero it out once, this is to have a program write zeroes to all the bits on the drive. You can use CCleaner to do this:

 

 

 

Once this is done, no data will be recoverable from it. No need to wear it out and deteriorate it any more than that.

Edited October 30, 2016 by Litargirio

[porina]

Best thing to do is look for a utility from the drive manufacturer, and find a secure erase function in that. This will actually instruct the drive to wipe, which is different that trying to write data to wipe what was there as there is no guarantee it will do so.

[NeoFrux]

8 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Do a full, slow format in Windows. It'll take a long time, but a couple of those back to back will more or less kill everything on the drive beyond recognition.

A full format in Windows doesn't zero the drive, the only difference between it and a quick format is a test for bad sectors. The data remains intact; All that's deleted is the MFT.

 

Samsung's Magician software comes with a Secure Erase tool that should work fine for what you want to do.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Litargirio said:

In the case of a USB, it is enough to zero it out once, this is to have a program write zeroes to all the bits on the drive. You can use ImageUSB to do this:

 

http://www.osforensics.com/tools/write-usb-images.html

 

Once this is done, no data will be recoverable from it. No need to wear it out and deteriorate it any more than that.

 

4 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Do a full, slow format in Windows. It'll take a long time, but a couple of those back to back will more or less kill everything on the drive beyond recognition.

This may not work in all ssds due to how they write they data not being on the same chunks every time, Use the secrue earse function built in. Most ssds encrypt everything and they generate a new key with secure erase.

[Litargirio]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

This may not work in all ssds due to how they write they data not being on the same chunks every time

If you write zeroes to the entire drive, because of the way SSDs work, the old data may still subsist on the chips, but it is impossible to access it. The only thing that the SSD would return when reading from it through the SATA bus are zeroes, or esentially blank. Nothing.

[NeoFrux]

1 minute ago, Litargirio said:

If you write zeroes to the entire drive, because of the way SSDs work, the old data may still subsist on the chips, but it is impossible to access it. The only thing that the SSD would return when reading from it through the SATA bus are zeroes, or esentially blank. Nothing.

This is true; However, due to overprovisioning, if you want to be absolutely certain you zero the whole thing (because reasons?), Secure Erase is both easier and more... Well, secure.

[ARikozuM]

Please use "clean all" from diskpart.

[AnnoyedShelf]

17 minutes ago, minimalist said:

Is there recommended software?  I know SSD's are different than HDD's

Run eraser and do their 7-pass wipe.  Then run DBAN a few times and it should be good.

[0x1e]

All you need to do is a single 0 pass.

I would use CCleaner.

Unlike a HDD where you need to do several passes with an SSD one is enough.

[NeoFrux]

Yeah, no need to go overboard with multiple overwrites; Unlike traditional hard drives where it's theoretically possible to recover data due to the way magnetic media works, files on SSD's are completely erased when the data is zeroed. So you only need one pass, no need for random data writes or anything, all that'll do is wear the drive down faster.

 

Again, the Secure Erase tool from the manufacturer should be your best bet. Easy, zeroes the whole drive including the OP area.

[Litargirio]

7 minutes ago, AnnoyedShelf said:

Run eraser and do their 7-pass wipe.  Then run DBAN a few times and it should be good.

It's an SSD. Eraser es for HDDs. Because on hard drives, you can choose which part of the disk you wish to write to each time, whereas on SSDs you can't. The SSD distributes the writes to balance the wear and tear, making the location that you write data to unpredictable.

[minimalist]

Oh shit.  I forgot to mention that my 1TB drive has my OS on it.  How would I go about do this now?

[Litargirio]

1 minute ago, minimalist said:

Oh shit.  I forgot to mention that my 1TB drive has my OS on it.  How would I go about do this now?

Is it the same one you want to sell?

[NeoFrux]

5 minutes ago, minimalist said:

Oh shit.  I forgot to mention that my 1TB drive has my OS on it.  How would I go about do this now?

Again, Samsung Magician has your back. Even though normally it won't let you do it for an OS drive, since you have a second SSD, you can have it create bootable media to let you secure erase your drives outside of Windows.

[AnnoyedShelf]

6 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

It's an SSD. Eraser es for HDDs. Because on hard drives, you can choose which part of the disk you wish to write to each time, whereas on SSDs you can't. The SSD distributes the writes to balance the wear and tear, making the location that you write data to unpredictable.

You sort of have a point, but its really your only option short of just driving your power drill through the board.

[NeoFrux]

Just now, AnnoyedShelf said:

You sort of have a point, but its really your only option short of just driving your power drill through the board.

For traditional magnetic storage media, yes. For solid state, no. On solid state, when a zero is written, it's a zero.

[Litargirio]

Just now, AnnoyedShelf said:

You sort of have a point, but its really your only option short of just driving your power drill through the board.

Unlike HDDs, which can lend themselves to data recovery even if you overwrite the entire thing, once an SSD cell gets overwritten it is impossibe to recover the previous state of it. You can and do all the computer magic you want, the SSD will never tell you what data it had on the cell previously.

[AnnoyedShelf]

20 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

Unlike HDDs, which can lend themselves to data recovery even if you overwrite the entire thing, once an SSD cell gets overwritten it is impossibe to recover the previous state of it. You can and do all the computer magic you want, the SSD will never tell you what data it had on the cell previously.

I know how this shit works, relax, I'm agreeing with you.  Just wasn't thinking straight for a second.  But yeah, theres not much he can do.  I'd say microwave it, but he wants to sell it so I really don't know what to suggest.

[NeoFrux]

Just now, AnnoyedShelf said:

I know how this shit works, relax, I'm agreeing with you.  Just wasn't thinking straight for a second.  But yeah, theres not much he can do.  I'd say microwave it, but he wants to sell it so I really don't know what to suggest.

There's no need to microwave it when zeroing the drive literally irrevocably erases all the data on the SSD.

[Litargirio]

@AnnoyedShelf

 

All he needs to do is zero it using CCleaner once.

[NeoFrux]

Are you reading this, LMG staff? Time to do a "Secure Erase As Fast As Possible" TechQuickie episode.  So many solutions to the same problem...

[AshleyAshes]

Guys, I hate to break it to you all, but you have no need to DBAN or erase a drive over and over up to 7 times.  All of these solutions are overkill.  They are extreme measures designed for highly secure data such as military and government where the 'value' of that data is extreme.

 

But note this important fact: No one in the history of academic research or law enforcement has ever actually recovered any meaningful data from storage media that went though even one pass of zeroing.  Everything else is hypothetical doom speak.  You are not trying to keep top secret documents or nuclear launch keys from landing in the hands of a rival nation  You are trying to make sure that the new owner of your HDD doesn't find the login for your Amazon account in some temporary file and proceed to order twenty 75" televisions to their house.  If it's an HDD, zero it, if it's an SSD, use the secure erase function to flip all the bits a tenth of a second.  It's gone, you're safe, no valuable private or financial information will be getting to other parties.

 

But you're right, there could be data remaining in a HDDs boot sector or something!  ...Your credit card number or other private or financial information is not stored in any of these areas of a hard drive.

 

Every doom story you hear about data actually being recovered is data that was never deleted.  Someone thought SHIFT+DEL deleted all that child porn.  Someone thought the delete function on their phone securely deleted their search history of 'How to murder your boss and get away with it'.  Someone didn't realize that when they snuck their phone into the women's locker room, it would upload all those videos to the cloud when they thought they thought they moved all the files to that USB key hidden in their ceiling.

 

You're just wiping a consumer hard drive, just zero it or use the secure erase tool and relax.