I like to run secure erase before I fresh install windows and in the past I’ve used the Magician Utility to make a secure erase utility bootable usb.

However, I believe the secure erase bootable usb process was intended for SATA drives because you have to remove the cables from the SSD during the process.

How can I run the equivalent process for an M.2 drive? I have a 980 Pro with the heatsink. Unscrewing and reseating M.2s isn’t really something to be doing more than once or twice. So there must be another method.

  • logicearth@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Are you reselling or giving away the machine in question with the M.2 drive? If you are not doing that, then you should refrain from using secure erase methods on the drive, they will greatly degrade the lifespan.

  • PlutoDelic@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Are you trying to use the m.2 SSD as a portable bootable device?

    You don’t need to “secure erase” to create a bootable drive, and i don’t see any reason to use Magician (not sure if it actually does that), when you can use Rufus.

    Secure Erase is when you want to 100% delete what has been stored, because a “normal format/erase” data can actually be reverted, unless something new is written above it.

    Also, just so you know, secure erasing is only recommended when really selling an SSD and you’re paranoid, it can technically degrade the storage a bit. I wouldn’t recommend to use it as frequent as you imply.

  • onomatopoetix@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    in this case you can create a bootable usb that has killdisk, you just boot into that thumbstick, run killdisk, select your nvme and killdisk has 1-pass, 3-pass etc to wipe the nvme. 3-pass wipes it and writes gibberish total 3 times, so the only data possible to “recover” is that last written gibberish. And in the process it also ages the ssd because…ssd.