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Just double-click the Erase Disk icon (looks like a red/white pencil eraser). Once Parted Magic is fired up, you’ll see this nice linux desktop: You’ll want to change the boot option so that you boot directly from the Parted Magic USB stick.Ĭhoose the first option, and let ‘er rip. Okay, now connect the drive(s) to erase, power them on, stick your Parted Magic USB stick into your puter, and… ![]() If you do use these internal drive docks, make sure to go into your BIOS/UEFI and enable “hot swap” for the SATA ports that the dock(s) are connected to. You cannot use an external USB drive dock as far as I know, since the drive to be erased must be connected directly to a SATA port on your motherboard. #Super eraser ssd freeIf you don’t have free SATA ports, grab a I/O CREST 4 Port SATA III PCI-e add-in card. ICY DOCK DuoSwap MB971SP-B 5.25 Inch Hot Swap Drive Caddy I mention these because I had 2 of them for 4 years. There is also this one from ICY DOCK, but the ejection mechanisms are plastic and they tend not work very well for some drives. The latched doors on this one are metal, and the metal mechanism both inserts and ejects the drives for you. The Kingwin version is fabulous, and I have 2 of them (I copy a lot of drives). Kingwin Hot Swap Mobile Rack w/USB 3.0 Hub For 2.5”&3.5” SSD/HDD You can either connect it internally to a power connector and SATA cable or my preferred option: an internal drive docking bay. Next, you’ll need to connect your old SSD or HDD to your puter. You’ll also need to use something like Rufus to burn the Parted Magic image to a USB stick so you can boot from it. So, my preferred option is to use Parted Magic. Well, you can, but it’s kind of a pain and may involve fun steps like putting your computer to sleep and then waking it up again in order to “unfreeze” the drive. First of all, you can’t do this (easily) from within your operating system. Great, so how do I Secure Erase my old drive? Often times, Enhanced Secure Erase does exactly the same thing as Secure Erase – which is just fine for our purposes. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Enhanced Secure Erase is supposed to write random data first over several passes, and then finish with a pass of zeroes. ![]() Secure Erase generally just writes all zeroes to the whole drive, while Enhanced Secure Erase depends on the manufacturer. Pretty much all modern HDDs have Secure Erase, and most also have Enhanced Secure Erase. The purpose of these two low-level commands is so that when instructed, the drive itself will write a bunch of random data and/or zeroes – in order to effectively erase itself – and no caching or error correction or anything else will get in the way. HDDs these days have 2 features built into the firmware of the drive itself: Secure Erase, and Enhanced Secure Erase. #Super eraser ssd softwareNow, you may have come across software called “Secure Erase”, but that’s not necessarily what we’re talking about here. Enter Secure Erase and Enhanced Secure Erase! #Super eraser ssd windowsSo, when you write a bunch of zeroes to an HDD using software running in Windows or Linux (like with the dd command), you can’t always be certain that this data is reaching every nook and cranny of the disk – more or less. They manage things like caching data in the drives cache memory, error correction, and so on. Mechanical drives also have controller chips like SSDs, but those chips work differently. While SSDs can be “secure erased” relatively simply, the same is not true of mechanical drives.įor old fashioned hard disk drives (HDDs), you’ll need to somehow write a bunch of random data and/or a bunch of zeroes to the whole drive – thereby erasing its contents. Next up, you need to know that erasing a drive is a complex topic. With an SSD, “Secure Erase” usually involves changing a sort of “key” on the drive that renders the stored data unreadable. SSDs are quite a different animal since the flash storage medium they use is nowhere near the same as spinning magnetic disks. To erase a mechanical drive, you have to overwrite all the sectors on the drive that contain data, one at a time. If you write data to the drive, most if it will be written the way you think. In a mechanical hard drive, that controller is a bit simpler. Long story short, both types of drive have controllers on board. There are a million ways out there to erase a drive before sending it to the great bit bucket in the sky…įirst of all, you should probably know that good old fashioned mechanical hard disks store data very differently than solid state drives (SSDs). Obviously, you’re going to need to recycle the drive… #Super eraser ssd upgradeWhen the time comes to upgrade your puter, you may end up with a leftover hard drive or SSD. ![]()
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