Consequences of formatting without idling afterwards for garbage collection?

[friend'scatdied]

Bought a used M.2 PCIE SSD recently that's still en route to me.

The previous owner deleted partitions and/or formatted the drive pretty much right before pulling it.

I've read that it's ideal to let SSDs idle for a while after a full erase cycle to let garbage collection run its course but I'm wondering if that still applies today or for my situation.

Is there anything I should worry about or do? I'd like to clean install onto it as a boot drive soon and I want to make sure there are no long-standing performance implications from the format-and-pull.

 

[Ocellaris]

Do a secure erase on the drive when you get it, then use the drive however you want.

 

[friend'scatdied]

Do a secure erase on the drive when you get it, then use the drive however you want.

Do I need to wait after secure-erasing or can I start installing the OS right away?

 

[Ocellaris]

Do I need to wait after secure-erasing or can I start installing the OS right away?

Secure erase fills the entire drive with 0s so I am not sure what benefit you would gain from waiting.

 

[friend'scatdied]

Secure erase fills the entire drive with 0s so I am not sure what benefit you would gain from waiting.

Oh -- I'm not really concerned with the drive not being thoroughly wiped if that's what the secure erase aims to do.

I'm just concerned if this "let the drive idle for a while after formatting/erasing for garbage collection to run" is actually still a thing.

 

[CVNet1]

Secure erase does what garbage collection does to free space. Only difference is with secure erase, the entire drive is marked as free space prior to doing the garbage collection part of the process.
Best way to handle secure erase is to download the vendors utility for your drive and run secure erase using that program.

 

[drescherjm]

Secure erase fills the entire drive with 0s so I am not sure what benefit you would gain from waiting.

Not on a SSD or at least not if you use the correct software. On an SSD the ATA secure erase command should erase the mapping table causing the SSD to know that all sectors are free.

 

[ToddW2]

SECURE ERASE any new/used SSD you get.

I've seen some crazy performance differences after being completed, even on enterprise SSD.

 

[friend'scatdied]

So apparently according to CrystalDisk the drive only had 7 power cycles and a total usage of one hour. I ran ATA Secure Erase anyway via Parted Magic.

Am I good to start installing an OS onto it immediately?

 

[evilsofa]

No, you need to sprinkle chicken blood in two circles around the SSD while chanting "Gunter glieben glauchen globen" first.