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Erasing Samsung 950 Pro?

WxChaser

WxChaser

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 23, 2000
Messages
1,328
I have Win 10 Pro installed on one Samsung 950 Pro - I would like to totally erase the SSD.

Secure Erase doesn't work from Samsung Magician because there is already an OS installed. I want to use both of my 950 Pro's to set up a RAID.

Any ideas of how to remove the Windows installation & partitions would be appreciated. I am going to install the OS on an Intel 750 400 GB drive and try setting up an NVME Raid on an ASUS Z170 Deluxe.
 
if you're keeping the SSD and don't care about security then secure erase shouldn't be necessary. Just format it or delete the partition in windows the same way you would any other drive
 
ASUS ROG boards have this built into the Bios

here is Parted Magic for free

Partition magic can do it via boot from USB

I also disagree about not needing to do this, a secure erase will make sure the drive knows that it is empty a format will not actually have the same effect on an SSD.
 
mls1995 said:
if you're keeping the SSD and don't care about security then secure erase shouldn't be necessary. Just format it or delete the partition in windows the same way you would any other drive
Click to expand...

This. If your drive is not encrypted then there is no reason to bother with a secure erase if your just reinstalling windows.

your data is already open (not an encrypted OS) so why would previous data matter?

Also if you format the drive the computer won't get confused because the previous file system was wiped. Data maybe on it but there is no file system so as far as the computer is concerned its empty unless you actually scan it for hidden data like with recuva. That is just unneeded writes and time
 
SomeGuy133 said:
This. If your drive is not encrypted then there is no reason to bother with a secure erase if your just reinstalling windows.

your data is already open (not an encrypted OS) so why would previous data matter?

Also if you format the drive the computer won't get confused because the previous file system was wiped. Data maybe on it but there is no file system so as far as the computer is concerned its empty unless you actually scan it for hidden data like with recuva. That is just unneeded writes and time
Click to expand...

Performance can suffer, yes garbage collection and TRIM should take care of that, but I have had too many drives (yes they were older drives) loose performance and then work drastically better after a secure erase.

So maybe I got spooked once and now do something I do not need to, but it works for me so whatever
 
zaniix said:
Performance can suffer, yes garbage collection and TRIM should take care of that, but I have had too many drives (yes they were older drives) loose performance and then work drastically better after a secure erase.

So maybe I got spooked once and now do something I do not need to, but it works for me so whatever
Click to expand...

prove that. Calling bullshit unless you have proof. It also can't be a Samsung EVO because that is a Sammy TLC issue.

SSD and OS simply do not care if data was in it at one point. There is no difference from a 0 or a 1 in those blocks or if it was written to at one point. The SSD and OS simply do not care once a format was done. As far as they are concern the drive is clean.
 
Quick format during the installation process, when you select the disk to install Windows to, select Advanced, click Format and the SSD firmware's Garbage Collection should deal with the rest in the background.
 
zaniix said:
ASUS ROG boards have this built into the Bios

here is Parted Magic for free

Partition magic can do it via boot from USB

I also disagree about not needing to do this, a secure erase will make sure the drive knows that it is empty a format will not actually have the same effect on an SSD.
Click to expand...

I never saw a link to free Parted Magic
 
SomeGuy133 said:
how? I would love to know how that's possible. Was it over heating?
Click to expand...

No way, first of all secure erase shouldn't be able to heat the ssd over it's thermal limit. Second of it, the ssd simply won't go hotter than a certain temperature, since it thermal throttles.
 
WxChaser said:
I have Win 10 Pro installed on one Samsung 950 Pro - I would like to totally erase the SSD.

Secure Erase doesn't work from Samsung Magician because there is already an OS installed. I want to use both of my 950 Pro's to set up a RAID.

Any ideas of how to remove the Windows installation & partitions would be appreciated. I am going to install the OS on an Intel 750 400 GB drive and try setting up an NVME Raid on an ASUS Z170 Deluxe.
Click to expand...

Simply the answer is have a spare crap drive with a os on it plug it in and use Samsung magician 4.8 to do a secure erase the Samsung 950 pro. Then go back to your standard os and you will have a empty drive
 
alphataru said:
No way, first of all secure erase shouldn't be able to heat the ssd over it's thermal limit. Second of it, the ssd simply won't go hotter than a certain temperature, since it thermal throttles.
Click to expand...

thats my point. How could a secure erase kill a drive? Only way I see is if it was some how aggressive enough to cause it to overheat but that shouldn't be possible. so how can a secure erase some how kill it? All your doing is writing 0s to all the blocks.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
thats my point. How could a secure erase kill a drive? Only way I see is if it was some how aggressive enough to cause it to overheat but that shouldn't be possible. so how can a secure erase some how kill it? All your doing is writing 0s to all the blocks.
Click to expand...
Agreed what he said Ive been secure erasing all day today. 950 pro's 850 pro's
 
zaniix said:
Performance can suffer, yes garbage collection and TRIM should take care of that, but I have had too many drives (yes they were older drives) loose performance and then work drastically better after a secure erase.

So maybe I got spooked once and now do something I do not need to, but it works for me so whatever
Click to expand...

There's no need to do it anymore. This was a major concern with the early drives you are referring to for two of the following three reasons:

1) No TRIM functionality
2) No generic garbage collection functionality if TRIM was not present
3) No over-provisioning

Most if not all modern drives have either 1 or 2 which work in tandem with 3. Secure erasing will still provide a performance boost, but is rather minuscule compared to the rather drastic improvement that old drives would experience.

I'd actually argue that some drives are a bit too aggressive with their over-provision algorithms these days. Now if your drive doesn't have over-provisioning and you fill it up to less than 30% free space, you may actually benefit from a secure-erase. There's only so much you can expect from what TRIM/Garbage Collection can do alone if it doesn't have enough free space to operate.
 
I just used Partition Magic and it worked fine for my purposes.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
how? I would love to know how that's possible. Was it over heating?
Click to expand...
I don't know if the cause is known (yet) but it most likely is NOT hardware failure but firmware related. When I said "destroyed", I didn't mean "physically obliterated". Another term might be "bricked".

But as Vittra said: you don't need to secure-erase an SSD anymore unless it is known to need it due to a bug or lack of a feature. A quick-format and 5-30 minutes (depends on the drive) will do just about the same but you don't need to use another software package for that since a modern Windows/Linux/WhateverOS installer allows you to quick-format before installing.
 
"Correct, Parted Magic appears to work fine on the SM951 AHCI drives that we have. It does not work on the SM951 NVMe drive that we have." - LegitReviews regarding Secure Delete, in the comments of their SM951 review.

LegitReview's later review of the NVMe version of the SM951 talks about using " the ‘Format NVM Command’ to do a manual low level format of the NVMe drive". First I've heard of it; do not try it on the 950 Pro without speaking to Samsung about it first.

The Ars Technica review of the Samsung 950 Pro states: "if you need to secure erase a 950 Pro you will have to wait until Magician 4.8. Parted Magic doesn’t show the drive and the built-in secure erase function on Asus motherboards seems to ignore it too."

Samsung Magician 4.8 is available now.
 
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