Question How To Secure Erase a Crucial MX500 CT1000MX500SSD1 SSD ?

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danielm175

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Dec 30, 2016
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Hi,

I am extremely interested on how do you securely erase all data/overwrite the drive before donating or selling your computer with the Crucial MX500 CT1000MX500SSD1 SSD?

As most manufacturers like Samsung have a tool where you can download from manufacture website to securely erase your data before giving away your PC eg data cannot be recovered.

But Samsung Magician or Crucial Storage Executive does not support the Crucial MX500 CT1000MX500SSD1 SSD drive.

So my questions would be:

(1) why Samsung does not support a secure erase for this drive ?
(2) how can you securely erase all content on this SSD before selling. EG no data can be recovered with third party tools ?

Link to SSD: https://uk.crucial.com/ssd/mx500/CT1000MX500SSD1#reach

Thank you.
 
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danielm175 said:
Crucial Storage Executive does not support the Crucial MX500 CT1000MX500SSD1 SSD drive.
Click to expand...
Crucial Storage Executive supports MX500 drives for sure. May be update it to latest version.
In Crucial Storage Executive - secure erase is is called Sanitize drive.

Samsung Magician supports Samsung drives only (and only retail not oem products).

5.PNG
 
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SkyNetRising said:
Crucial Storage Executive supports MX500 drives for sure. May be update it to latest version.
In Crucial Storage Executive - secure erase is is called Sanitize drive.

Samsung Magician supports Samsung drives only (and only retail not oem products).

5.PNG
Click to expand...

This is wired then as on my Crucial Storage Executive it says no drives found supporting sanitize. Please see screenshots down below.

Image 1 - Showing you that my drive cannot be sanitized

Image 2 - Showing you that my drive is the same drive as your drive?

I have the lastest installed version of the software, so why can you sanitise your drive and I cannot sanitise my drive, this is wired!
 
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SkyNetRising said:
See requirements list for sanitize operation.
Sata controller has to be in AHCI mode.
Drive is offline/Drive has no mounted partitions. This means, you can do sanitize on secondary drive only (not windows OS drive).
Click to expand...


Oh ok I see now haha, ok so what do I need to do if I want to sanitise my Windows OS Drive which is the SSD? For example, if I want to sell my computer and keep the same SSD inside but wipe it all using this software first before giving the PC away. What should I do and how?
 
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danielm175 said:
Hi,

I am extremely interested on how do you securely erase all data/overwrite the drive before donating or selling your computer with the Crucial MX500 CT1000MX500SSD1 SSD?

As most manufacturers like Samsung have a tool where you can download from manufacture website to securely erase your data before giving away your PC eg data cannot be recovered.

But Samsung Magician or Crucial Storage Executive does not support the Crucial MX500 CT1000MX500SSD1 SSD drive.

So my questions would be:

(1) why Samsung does not support a secure erase for this drive ?
(2) how can you securely erase all content on this SSD before selling. EG no data can be recovered with third party tools ?

Link to SSD: https://uk.crucial.com/ssd/mx500/CT1000MX500SSD1#reach

Thank you.
Click to expand...
Look through the bios for a secure erase function.

I have never tried it so no idea if it works.
 
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The ATA standard defines a SANITIZE FREEZE LOCK EXT command. I suspect that Windows executes this command soon after bootup to prevent malware from erasing your drive.

The SANITIZE FREEZE LOCK EXT command causes any subsequent sanitize command other than the SANITIZE STATUS EXT command to be aborted until a power-on reset or hardware reset is processed with SSP (Software Settings Preservation) disabled.
Click to expand...
 
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Well, Samsung's utility doesn't support it because it's not a Samsung drive.

In my opinion, Crucial's utility is vastly inferior to ones from other brands like Samsung and Sandisk/WD. Those let you create a bootable flash drive, Crucial's does not. To use Crucial's utility, you have to have the drive directly connected to the PC via SATA and it must be a secondary drive (not the one running the OS). Even when that's the case, it can still be grumpy. I vaguely remember having use the the PSID Revert option first. That requires getting some numbers from the drive's label. If this is the only SSD in the system and you can not put it in another system, you may not be able to use this utility. By the way, I think your drive's firmware is out of date.

Another option would be to make a bootable Linux flash drive and try to do it from there. You won't be able to use Crucial's utility but there are some options built into Linux. The Secure Erase option is probably the best but may not always be available. Some machines even seem to put these drives in a mode where they won't support the ATA security features, and I'm not talking about them simply being "frozen." Another option is the blkdiscard command. It may be less ideal but it will almost certainly work, by which I mean you won't be prevented from using the command. After performing it, I'd leave the drive powered but idle for a few hours, just to be sure the controller has time to wipe the cells. Here is a link with some info that may help:

Link
 
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SkyNetRising said:
SSD firmware update has never erased any data for me.
Not on Samsung, Intel or Crucial drives.
Don't know about Kingston.
Click to expand...
Update is different from full flash of new FW. It doesn't replace everything.It's more like difference from updating BIOS and flashing BIOS that has been erased.
Technically speaking, BIOS has firmware and firmware in SSD controller is a BIOS.
 
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CountMike said:
How's that if all storage is wiped completely and all transistors are i off state ?
Click to expand...

I think you're making some assumptions that aren't necessarily true. Flashing firmware isn't going to instantly wipe the NAND. Even if it appears (from the user perspective) that the drive is now empty, there's likely still going to be some data left in the NAND, at least until the controller decides to erase it. Whether that data is realistically recoverable (without going to ridiculous extremes) is another issue.

Regardless, I don't think it's really relevant to this discussion. I'm fairly sure the Crucial utility does not even wipe user data when updating the firmware (which the OP should do, as it's out of date).
 
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MWink64 said:
I think you're making some assumptions that aren't necessarily true. Flashing firmware isn't going to instantly wipe the NAND. Even if it appears (from the user perspective) that the drive is now empty, there's likely still going to be some data left in the NAND, at least until the controller decides to erase it. Whether that data is realistically recoverable (without going to ridiculous extremes) is another issue.

Regardless, I don't think it's really relevant to this discussion. I'm fairly sure the Crucial utility does not even wipe user data when updating the firmware (which the OP should do, as it's out of date).
Click to expand...
Have look inside the disk
https://www.disk-editor.org/index.html
It clearly showed all zeros, except for header nothing was left. SSDs are not like mechanical HDDs, there are no redundant and para rel tracks to salvage data from
 
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