[SOLVED] How to Safely Wipe NVME SSD?

[MegaMexican]

I have two storage devices: a Samsung 960 Evo (NVME) and a Samsung 850 Evo (SATA). I have Windows 10 installed on the NVME drive and the SATA drive is just for extra storage. I have moved almost everything from the 960 to the 850 to clear space on the 960, yet the 960 is still using up about 377 GB. I've had this drive for about 4 to 5 years and I think it's time to wipe it and do a clean install of Windows. I've heard that there is a specific way to wipe SSDs that keeps its lifespan from shortening, but I'm not entirely sure what the process is and if there's anything that is specifically needed for an NVME drive. What would be the best way to wipe my drive?

 

[MegaMexican]

you can use this https://partedmagic.com/secure-erase/

It turns out that my SSDs came with Samsung Magician, which allows you to make a bootable USB stick with a secure erase program on there. So, I made the stick, booted on to it, and in about 5 seconds the thing was wiped squeaky clean. Just for future reference for anyone else out there. Thank you for the suggestion though!

 

[MadsModsat]

I know a solution has been found, but I thought I'd mention another option which might be useful to some.

Some motherboards have a secure erase option for SSDs available in BIOS.

I'm not really sure how common the feature is, but my current motherboard is the 3rd one I've owned in the last 5 years which has that feature, so it is not something new.

It could be worth checking as an easy solution, if it suddenly becomes neccessary and your motherboard model is relatively "modern"

 

[fzabkar]

A quick format, or partition initialisation, should be all that you need to do. Windows issues a TRIM command that effectively zeroes the drive's contents.

 

[Maxxify]

A sanitize, if possible. This would be via nvme-sanitize for NVMe or ATA sanitize with hdparm (sanitize-block-erase) or some other form of block erase. A format or secure erase only wipes the mapping table and then sends TRIM to the entire drive, which does not happen immediately. TRIM on some drives will effectively return values (e.g. RZAT) depending on the OS & drive, though.