Secure Erase or Quick Format on Samsung 850 Pro?

[Armenius]

I have a secondary SSD that I have been keeping Windows 8 on, but realized I have not booted into it for more than a year and I'd like to use it for more games. The drive has been using about 420 of the 465GB available for quite some time. Would it be worth it to do a Secure Erase to ensure maximum performance, or will a quick format suffice for my usage scenario? I've looked around and cannot find a clear cut answer on this.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

Do a secure erase. There's no real drawback to doing so and should reset the drive to a like-new state and restore any lost performance.

https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

 

[Armenius]

I went ahead and did a quick format because I cannot easily get to the drive to power cycle it and unfreeze it. After formatting I forced a TRIM and it's benchmarking as well as the day it was new.

 

[HammerSandwich]

I went ahead and did a quick format because I cannot easily get to the drive to power cycle it and unfreeze it.

That's been a serious PITA for me, too.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

For whatever stupid reason, often times sleeping the system will unfreeze the SSD.

 

[antok86]

can you explain "frozen" ssd?

 

[rive22]

parted magic does a power cycle that unfreezes drives that do this and will do a secure erase.

 

[Icy006]

Why would a secure erase benefit over a quick format? I'm not up on how firmware manages trim operations, but I'd expect that either way it would see a ton of free space.