Question Secure-erase bad SSD for RMA?

[pmjm]

I have an 8TB Gen4 NVME SSD that has failed prematurely.

SMART health is 0%. I have arranged for an RMA with the manufacturer, but it has a lot of my sensitive data on it, everything from documents containing my SSN and medical records to proprietary source code. The drive is not encrypted.

All my data is backed up, I can read from the drive but not write to it. I have tried the BIOS secure erase but it is not able to write to the drive, nor can any software utility I've tried, it's basically write-locked.

The manufacturer of the drive will not send out a new unit until they receive this old one, and it's a $1200 drive so I can't really just suck it up and take the L on it.

Trying to figure out if there's any way to secure my data from prying eyes when I send this out. Any ideas?

 

[SkyNetRising]

The manufacturer of the drive will not send out a new unit until they receive this old one, and it's a $1200 drive so I can't really just suck it up and take the L on it.
Trying to figure out if there's any way to secure my data from prying eyes when I send this out. Any ideas?

Nope.
You either trust them with your personal data
or take the loss.

When my nvme drive died I chose not to RMA it for exactly the same reason.
It was only 500GB drive though.

 

[pmjm]

Is there any way I could hook the pins up to power and fry the thing without showing outward damage? Put it in the microwave or something? Lol

 

[SkyNetRising]

User created damage disqualifies your drive for RMA.

 

[fzabkar]

What brand is it? I have had some success in helping people to secure erase a failed Samsung drive.

Can you provide a photo of the PCB?