I grilled my local hardware security friend who said you should never trust
the secure delete feature in ssd . In general it has been found insecure.

As mentioned the "Large grinder" seems like the only way to be sure.

On Sat., Mar. 23, 2024, 10:50 Giles Orr via talk, <[email protected]> wrote:

> I have, for many years, used "Darik's Boot and Nuke" on a USB stick to
> securely wipe spinning hard disks.  It takes a long time, but I mostly
> understand and trust the process.
>
> I'm now at the point that I have to wipe and dispose of SSDs, and I'm
> feeling a bit shaky on the methodology.  Here's what I did:
>
>     # hdparm -I /dev/sdX
>
> Looked for enabled/locked/frozen in the output ... I won't go into
> making sure those are toggled correctly, but that appears to be
> needed.  This also lists what appears to be info about doing a wipe on
> the drive:
>
>     6min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT, 60min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT
>
> Then, set a password (why? but seems to be needed):
>
>     # hdparm --user-master u --security-set-pass foobar /dev/sdX
>
> Last, run the wipe:
>
>     # hdparm --user-master u --security-erase-enhanced foobar /dev/sdX
>
> Doing something like `dd if=/dev/sdX bs=5M count=5 | strings` (or
> sending it to `less`) definitely shows that it's changed from
> something organized to something full of identical characters.  But
> I've never seen this wipe process take more than 60 seconds, which
> makes me wonder about the `hdparm` declaration about the time required
> for a secure wipe.
>
> So I guess the big question is: should I trust this process?  Do we
> really think it's securely wiped?  Or should I be taking a hammer to
> the chips on the SSD because that's the only way to ensure it's fully
> wiped?
>
> --
> Giles
> https://www.gilesorr.com/
> [email protected]
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