Intel SSD Wipe

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What is the best way to securely wipe a Gen 1 Intel X25 mlc SSD. I want the drive to remain bootable and the data to be erased fairly completely.
:)thanks
 
What exactly do you mean by "remain bootable"? If you wipe the drive, there won't be any boot-related data left. However, it will still boot fine if you later reinstall an OS.

Parted Magic has a GUI program for erasing disks, which does support Secure Erase.
 
what I mean by bootable is I was told formatting could render the drive unable to be used as a boot drive for windows. I am just making sure before I do something wrong
 
The issue here is that SSDs may include more storage than is advertised on the box. This helps longevity when re-writing a few files many times on a nearly-full drive. Unfortunately, it also means that you can't be sure it's completely erased after a single pass... But how many passes is appropriate?

I'd probably erase the drive in windows, use Inte's TRIM tool, and do a 3-pass overwrite with DBAN.
http://www.intel.com/go/ssdtoolbox
http://www.dban.org/
 
Do a Secure Erase. It'll erase all the blocks in the SSD, since it's implemented in the firmware of the drive itself. DBAN will unnecessarily use up quite a few write cycles and not be able to access the entire flash anyway.
 
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