Anybody recommend anything that won't kill the drive? I've a few m.2 SATA drives I've pulled from systems I wall get shut of but I'd like to make sure there's nothing on them before they go.
So what I did to ghetto this recently was 1. Delete my useful files and then Chuck a huge pile of junk data (think Word docs full of Lorem Ipso) so it’s almost full 2. Encrypt in bitlocker with a ridiculously long key 3. Clean and re-partition the disk with diskpart after and leave a blank drive Even if someone does recover partitions they will be bit locker encrypted. Even if someone cracks that you’ve overwritten the whole drive with Lorem Ipso. I had some drives that had zero data on of consequence just like operating system but zero personal data so just did steps 2 and 3 with them.
There's ATA Secure Erase, which sets all cells to empty; there's ATA Enhanced Secure Erase, which does pattern-overwriting first. You can do it via hdparm pretty easily, or via Parted Magic even easier. Because of the way SSDs work - i.e. when you write data to Block 1 then write something else to "Block 1" it's not actually guaranteed to be the same block - this isn't recommended, and doubly so because it doesn't properly zero the flash cells (yes, even Step 3). Sure, you can do it as an initial make-me-feel-better process, but you need Step 4: Issue ATA Secure Erase Command to both properly wipe the drive and to restore factory performance.
The SSD I was wiping simply had game installers on, and it was 90% full already ... I just encrypted it and then blatted the partitions. The only disks I had real data on were spinners and they went through shred for a week and a half before I let them go
