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The use for HDDErase or Sanity Erase

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

I was wondering, once in a while I reinstall my laptop. Just to have a fresh copy of windows, how refreshing.

Anyway I've never done this before with my SSD. Will the secure erase function from HDDErase 3.3 just format my SSD and bring back the state as it was when I bought it?

I also read that HDDErase will write random data until it's full, isn't this just what we don't wanna do to the drive? And how about Sanity Erase, this should make the drive think it's empty, is this a good option? If performance will be back and if the Intel SSD's are even supporting this tool is unknown for me.

6 REPLIES 6

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

HDDerase 3.3 erases all data and has been recommended by Anand and PCPerspective to wipe the drive clean--before TRIM firmware became available.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

The ATA spec includes a Secure Erase feature. Rather than using some piece of software to overwrite the data on the drive, this is a built-in command to erase any sensitive data off the drive. Running this on an SSD will erase all the pages, making them once again available for instant writing.

There are a number of "shredder" programs which ensure that any remaining data on a drive is overwritten with garbage data. http://cmrr.ucsd.edu HDDErase is an app which is specifically designed to run the Secure Erase feature built into drives, as opposed to simply writing random data over the entire disk. There are probably other apps with similar names which do specifically write random data on the disk, but this one doesn't.

PPapp
New Contributor II

Yes, using HDDErase 3.3 (evidently 4.0 doesn't work for some people) will "reset" your SSD to as close to a factory state as it can be.

idata
Esteemed Contributor III

1 Day ago I've used HDDErase 3.3, was a bit of a hassle at first. My laptop in ATA mode doesn't detect the SSD, my pc detects the SSD in ATA mode but can't pass through the secure command. So eventually I used another laptop (zepto), which worked flawlessy.

As long as you have a computer that supports the ATA Security pass through it's a walk in the park. The drive is very fast again, thanks for the replies people.