Does Microsoft Surface Data Eraser Utility wipe the OS too?

Scenario:
* Surface Pro tablets used in a financial institution will be decommissioned and raffled off to employees
* Secure wiping is required while retaining the OS

Route A:
* Do full reset + full drive cleaning option via OS, then use CCleaner to wipe free space, and perform another full reset (also with full drive cleaning option)

Route B:
* Utilize Microsoft Surface Data Eraser Utility

Question on Route B:
* Does this utility automatically reload the OS as well? I can't find any information about this. It's recommended to use if you are selling the tablet. OK, so you run it, but what about the OS? How can you sell it if there's no OS?



EDIT 11/10/2016: See Post #5 regarding Route B. The tool formats the entire drive down to nothing and does not keep the OS. Thanks for confirming this AltTabbins!

Route B is good *enough*. Microsoft claims that it is a good way to decommission old devices. Personally, I would still use Blancco 5 or something similar and reinstall Windows 10. Surface Tools SHOULD remove everything except for the OS and do it in a way where the data is no longer recoverable.

By the way, its good to see you're still around. Sounds like things are working out well.

Note that if you do Route A, it also gives you an option to remove files and clean the drive during the reset. It takes a couple hours, so I assume it just does a Windows reset, then fills the rest of the free space on the drive with zeroes (just like using CCleaner or something similar) Should be easy to test, just do the reset/wipe, then run something like Recuva or TestDisk to see if it can find anything. In theory, with wear leveling on an SSDs, there's a possibility of data still being stored in cells even though the entire drive has been written, but I've never seen anyone even attempt to try to recover this data, and it may not really be possible.

It looks like the Surface Data Erase utility must use the ATA Secure Erase command to wipe the SSD, which will guarantee absolutely everything is wiped. For most SSDs, this means the drive firmware will send an erase command to every single NAND block, including the ones being used for over-provisioning. It's the only way to be sure an SSD is completely wiped, but you will have to reinstall the OS afterwards.

Nice thing is that the secure erase should only take a few seconds/minutes to run, so it's probably faster in the long run to just secure erase and reimage, instead of waiting for white space to be overwritten.

While I don't know for sure, I would imagine that the same technology used in option 1 (full drive cleaning) is the same as what is used in the option 2 data eraser utility.

Just tested the tool. It formats it down to nothing. It does not keep the OS.

Thank you for confirming this! Microsoft should really add a warning message about that so someone wouldn't mistakenly use it hoping it keeps the OS.

AltTabbins said:

Just tested the tool. It formats it down to nothing. It does not keep the OS.

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