How to fully delete all data from SSD before returning it to the manufacturer?

hdmi said:

I know. And we only have one boat... lol

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At least in Belgium it's a motor boat !! in Switzerland I think their navy just has 1 Rowing Boat bought on ebay from Oxford University in the UK. !!

Cheers
jimbo

If you are really worried about that super-sensitive bits of data left over in the cells of an SSD:


The Titanium Easy-Flux instantaneous SSD erasing device is for you!

hdmi said:

No, it won't. Modern SSDs use data deduplication and compression to improve transfer speeds, to increase the amount of dynamic overprovisioning and to reduce write amplification. As a consequence, writing zeros to the SSD will only cause those zeros to be subjected to the hardware compression, that is an inherent part of the controller chip. What's more, data that only contains zeros has a very low entropy. It means that the effective compression ratio will be very high (and close to 100%). As a direct result from this, the number of cells (or pages, as cells can not be written individually in NAND) that will be written will be incredibly small, thus leaving all the sensitive data stored in NAND. That in fact is why the Secure Erase command exists anyway in the first place. Its entire purpose is to securely erase persistent old myths that continue to ride across various corners of the internet. lol

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You are probably correct and I was probably wrong. However, the controller firmware on the SSD will report to any software querying it that every cell is zero. After that it would take a sophisticated electronic forensics lab to bypass the SSD controller and firmware to connect to each cell and query each cell as to whether it contains a 1 or a 0 and then put all those 1's and 0's back together to reconstruct files. That would be way beyond the capability of your standard repair technician at Dell or the hacker looking for a password to a bank account or credit card numbers.

NavyLCDR said:

If you are really worried about that super-sensitive bits of data left over in the cells of an SSD:

View attachment 41608
The Titanium Easy-Flux instantaneous SSD erasing device is for you!

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Hi there
Love it - but the local tip is cheaper and easier. !!!!!

@NavyLCDR

just a quick question here - not really to do with Windows -- but in current situation protecting data cables from NATO atlantic base in Iceland against sabotage to data to and from USA (pentagon, wall st etc) is obviously important. Hope the US navy has assistance there in that regard. Data land / cable transmissions are almost instantaneous (7 times around the Earth in a sec). At the speed of light (300,000 Km per sec) data transmission to and from a satellite in a typical geostationary asynchronous orbit while fast takes an order of magnitude longer compared with land / undersea cabling, This delay in the event of a nuclear alert could be fatal as well as markets on Wall st etc which rely on really fast transmission times. If markets also get hosed up then everything else collapses too. Hopefully politicians in the USA and elsewhere understand this fact.

Cheers
jimbo

NavyLCDR said:

You are probably correct and I was probably wrong. However, the controller firmware on the SSD will report to any software querying it that every cell is zero. After that it would take a sophisticated electronic forensics lab to bypass the SSD controller and firmware to connect to each cell and query each cell as to whether it contains a 1 or a 0 and then put all those 1's and 0's back together to reconstruct files. That would be way beyond the capability of your standard repair technician at Dell or the hacker looking for a password to a bank account or credit card numbers.

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The OP's question is not how to make the controller firmware falsely report that every cell is zero. Rather, it's how to fully erase all the NAND pages with certainty. The ATA Secure Erase command is the only way to be sure. That in fact is why the command is called Secure Erase, not Erase. It's because the ATA standard mandates that all data be overwritten during a Secure Erase. So, if a manufacturer claims ATA compliance and implements the ATA Secure Erase command in such a particular way that all data is not overwritten, the manufacturer faces a big lawsuit and the likely consequence of that will be that every customer (that is, every sane customer at least) will report that the reputation of the company is zero.