Hi.
I have a Samsung SSD I wish to securely erase. I've got it hooked up via a SATA to USB adapter. Magician software won't work in this configuration; it appears I need to have the SSD hooked up directly to the MB?
Can anyone confirm this, or have a way around it? And, yes, I need to securely erase it so that it is "reset" to factory condition and non-recoverable.
Thanks.
Can you get to the "clean all" command in Diskpart?
Just curious about the USB settings in BIOS, if it's off?
There's a tutorial on this site that says:
"The clean all command performs the same action as the clean command above, but includes to specify that each and every sector on the disk is zeroed (secure erase), which completely deletes all data contained on the disk. This will make the data on the disk unrecoverable."
Erase Disk using Diskpart Clean Command in Windows 10
I have no idea if that is factual nor do I know if Samsung Magician has some extra special secret sauce.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...commands/clean
From Microsoft Doc's, the Clean All command in Diskpart does indeed zero all sectors on the target disk.
Secure Erase & Linux Bootable Solution
1) While making a bootable solution for Secure Erase, please make sure the Device Manager window
is closed.
2) In some of the PCs, Bootable Solution may not work properly as expected because of compatibility
issue.
3) The Bootable solution is not compatible with pure SCSI or SATA NVIDIA/LSI/AMD chipset drivers.
4) AHCI or ATA mode must be enabled in the BIOS during PC boot up.
5) The Bootable solution may hang if the SSD is removed on PCs that do not support the hot plug
feature (e.g. ICH5/6 chipsets).
6) The Bootable solution will not work with devices attached via SATA 6Gbps (SATA III) operating in
IDE mode.
7) Secure Erase may not work on systems where SECURITY FREEZE LOCK is issued by the BIOS.
I can see the drive in Windows, and Disk Management. I can also see it in the Magician software. It's just that the Magician software won't work on a USB-connected drive, even if it's a Samsung SSD.
Thank you. I was reading that. But, my understanding is (and I could be completely wrong...), since writing to an SSD obviously shortens its life, the Secure Erase feature of an SSD actually runs at the firmware level, giving it access to *all* the storage areas on the drive, while software or Windows commands don't necessarily have access to *all* areas of the drive. The Secure Erase function will cause the drive to "flush all stored electrons, forcing the drive to “forget” all stored data. This command essentially resets all available blocks to the “erase” state, which is what TRIM uses for garbage collection purposes."
So, I guess maybe I'm just being lazy, not wanting to tear apart my desktop in order to hook this SSD up directly to a SATA connection on my MB, so that the Magician software will work on it. I was hoping there was another way for me to invoke the Secure Erase on this drive without doing that, or booting to some Linux distro, or some other software boot drive to access the Secure Erase function in the drive. Not finding anything conclusive in my web searches.
Thanks.
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