Question Which motherboards provide NVMe SSD Sanitize option ?

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christoffe93

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Jun 10, 2013
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I was wondering up you guys know of any other motherboard brands that offer the NVMe SSD sanitize option other than Asrock? I'm looking to buy a used motherboard with this option built in as its a very handy option to have if i go to sell my main drive. The only decent looking boards that will go with my setup is the asrock b550 steel legend but people are asking to much for it. I know some of the asus boards have secure erase but I've hears secure erase only deletes the mapping table not the blocks.
 
That is a software problem, not a special motherboard feature. They have simply included a simple tool on the BIOS chip.

There are plenty of bootable tools that can wipe and sanitize a drive for you.

DBAN is one of the more famous ones.
 
christoffe93 said:
I was wondering up you guys know of any other motherboard brands that offer the nvme sanitize option other than Asrock? I'm looking to buy a used motherboard with this option built in as its a very handy option to have if i go to sell my main drive. The only decent looking boards that will go with my setup is the asrock b550 steel legend but people are asking to much for it. I know some of the asus boards have secure erase but I've hears secure erase only deletes the mapping table not the blocks.
Click to expand...
commandline function diskpart, and the /clean or /cleanall command will irrevocably destroy any data.
 
USAFRet said:
commandline function diskpart, and the /clean or /cleanall command will irrevocably destroy any data.
Click to expand...
Is this the kind of wipe that will send 1 and 0 to all the cells so even a data recovery tool couldn't find any information? I have thought about diskpart before but was worried certain area's of the drive would remain untouched when there's a partition remaining and in use. The issue i have is one drive still remains for booting, if i want to sell that drive as well how do a properly wipe it?
 
Eximo said:
Today I learned. I haven't wiped a drive in a long time apparently.
Click to expand...
Even us oldies are still learning, i didn't know secure erase wasn't actually a secure erase until a week ago. who would have thought with a name like that it would be just as usless as clearing the drive from window installation disk.
 
christoffe93 said:
Is this the kind of wipe that will send 1 and 0 to all the cells so even a data recovery tool couldn't find any information? I have thought about diskpart before but was worried certain area's of the drive would remain untouched when there's a partition remaining and in use. The issue i have is one drive still remains for booting, if i want to sell that drive as well how do a properly wipe it?
Click to expand...
It will "clean" the entire drive. It cares nothing about partitions.

You do this when and from an OS is installed on some other drive. You cannot clean the currently booted OS drive.
 
christoffe93 said:
I was wondering up you guys know of any other motherboard brands that offer the nvme sanitize option other than Asrock? I'm looking to buy a used motherboard with this option built in as its a very handy option to have if i go to sell my main drive. The only decent looking boards that will go with my setup is the asrock b550 steel legend but people are asking to much for it. I know some of the asus boards have secure erase but I've hears secure erase only deletes the mapping table not the blocks.
Click to expand...
I wonder what the garbage collection system does when it finds an empty or deleted mapping table.
 
While I understand your point, I feel the vendor provided tool is a better option to sanitize the SSD. e.g. Samsung magician for all Samsung SSDs and like that.
Of course only good brands I suppose offer such proprietary tools. Other low cost low quality SSDs you may have to rely on third-party tools like parted magic.
 
mmp09 said:
While I understand your point, I feel the vendor provided tool is a better option to sanitize the SSD. e.g. Samsung magician for all Samsung SSDs and like that.
Of course only good brands I suppose offer such proprietary tools. Other low cost low quality SSDs you may have to rely on third-party tools like parted magic.
Click to expand...
Have you ever tried to retrieve data from a drive that went through diskpart /clean or /cleanall?
Or even a full drive format in File explorer? (assuming there are no hidden partitions)

Try it, using any current consumer level recovery software.

I recently tried exactly this on a 3TB HDD.
1 partition, simple format in File Explorer.
36 hour deep scan with Autopsy....absolutely nothing was left. Nada.
 
I never sell drives, ever. They have no resale value and in the slim chance someone is devoted enough it's not worth the risk of any recovery.

If you are hell bent on selling it, this is the only method I'd consider. Many will say it's paranoid but again, I don't ever sell drives. Use Heidi Eraser (not while using the drive), Heidi has lots of options. After doing a 35 pass of the entire drive, encrypt it. Do another 35 pass and encrypt again.
 
@USAFRet
The device in question is NVMe SSD not HDD. It may not be a good idea to run CLEAN ALL on an SSD.
My tests reveal that just one pass is practically enough to kill data of HDD. I have long ago done such tests.
This is where I prefer vendor provided tools for an SSD to avoid one long pass of zeroing the drive.
 
mmp09 said:
@USAFRet
The device in question is NVMe SSD not HDD. It may not be a good idea to run CLEAN ALL on an SSD.
My tests reveal that just one pass is practically enough to kill data of HDD. I have long ago done such tests.
This is where I prefer vendor provided tools for an SSD to avoid one long pass of zeroing the drive.
Click to expand...
Why would cleanall not be good on an SSD?
 
premature wearing, while ssds have good endurance, all wiping apps generally warn you of the same. DISKPART CLEANALL just goes ahead and does a job though.
increased heat dissipation.
 
mmp09 said:
premature wearing, while ssds have good endurance, all wiping apps generally warn you of the same. DISKPART CLEANALL just goes ahead and does a job though.
increased heat dissipation.
Click to expand...
Well yes.
But if we consider the actual level of "premature wearing", it is really really small, in the context of the whole drive lifetime.

Now...if you were to do that every day...not good.

But if it needs to be done for the selling of a drive, a "warning" is sort of irrelevant.
I'm going to do it anyway. A blank drive trumps a tiny bit of extra write cycles.
 
Yes finally it is a personal preference. I have an OCD when it comes to SSD and wear-out :).
So I always prefer vendor provided tools or parted magic.
I use diskpart for quick cleaning only.
 
christoffe93 said:
I was wondering up you guys know of any other motherboard brands that offer the NVMe SSD sanitize option other than Asrock? I'm looking to buy a used motherboard with this option built in as its a very handy option to have if i go to sell my main drive. The only decent looking boards that will go with my setup is the asrock b550 steel legend but people are asking to much for it. I know some of the asus boards have secure erase but I've hears secure erase only deletes the mapping table not the blocks.
Click to expand...
Look for an SSD management utility which most major manufacturer's offer on their support web site. Most include a Secure Erase capability that's run from within the utility; both my Crucial and Samsung utilities do. If I recall correctly, the Samsung Secure Erase command can be issued against any SSD and not just Samsung drives (could be wrong).

By using the drive's utility for this you avoid running a whole lot of write cycles on the drive which you might by using a Wipe utility intended for spinning drives. And of course, we all know SSD flash memory cells have a limited number of writes which a "Wipe" does a whole lot of.

There is also an "ATA Secure Erase" command which works on SSD's in the same way. I don't know how to issue it from a command line though. That may be what the drive utility does.
 
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