SSD secure wipe beyond recovery?

[bowzef]

do SSD save same as HDD does? do they leave fragments when you wipe data? or if your wipe on a SSD its beyond recovery ? just wondering for security reason .

 

[HEXiT]

you can use drive wipers on ssd's and it should be just as if not more effective than on a hdds.
reason being is on an ssd the cell is either on or off to represent a bit. so if all the cells are written as 0 the drive becomes truly blank as there should be no residual signal left to interpret by forensic software.
while on a hdd you can reconstitute the data by reading the disk as there is always a residual signal left over even after multiple wipes.
if your still not happy you can always remove the drive and either keep it or destroy it with a hammer.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Not quite, because SSDs have large areas that the OS can't see for wear leveling etc. Plus compression.

Best option is to use a utility to send the drive an ATA Secure Erase command. This tells the drive to wipe everything, rather than telling it to write zeros everywhere the OS can see.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Parted Magic and HDDErase both have the ability to do an ATA secure erase.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

As to command line tools available for linux.

Personally, I don't see the point in paying for what can be gotten for free.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Both programs I listed are free and don't require you to know linux.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

I thought Parted Magic at least was payware? Might be thinking of partition magic.

I don't much like the idea of important security software being closed source. It's too easy to just claim to wipe the drive, but actually encrypt it (which will look like perfect random data if done correctly). Admittedly, ATA SE is a bit harder to fake.

 

[Hawkeye22]

My mistake, earlier versions of parted magic are free. It looks as if they've gone paid.