I Fail at SSDs

[greengolftee87]

So I had to reinstall my OS today so i figured that while I was doing that it would be a good time to do a secure erase on the ssd to restore it to factory settings. Following the instructions on Wiki everything went well except that when I executed the secure erase from a linux live CD nothing really happened. It said Disabling IRQ #19 and then hung. The ssd still works fine and im reinstalling anyway cause I need my comp up and running but how do you guys go about doing this. I use the ssd in a macbook and also have a windows server box available to me.

 

[hmz]

If the drive supports TRIM, it's unnecessary to do a secure erase..

 

[greengolftee87]

It does not. also I dont think you can send a TRIM command from OSX

 

[InvisiBill]

I've used Parted Magic's GUI Disk Erase program to do a Secure Erase, as well as the command line HDDErase, though neither on my SSD. For security reasons (so a virus doesn't completely wipe your drive), sometimes the SE command is blocked by the BIOS. You may need to boot the PC, then plug the SSD in after it has POSTed, so that it gets around the BIOS block. Also, the latest version of HDDErase is 4.0, but I believe some people needed to use 3.3 for it to work properly for them.