Does Parted Magic work or not!?

[fitzm]

I would hope that someone somewhere in Anandtech or on the planet is a data recovery genius who has conducted the most comprehensive tests available to mankind to test Parted Magic or vendor-specific "erase" utility on SSD's. Has anyone found empirically comprehensive test data which is reliable and virtually indisputable?

 

[yvesj]

what do you mean i did use it to secure erase my neutron gtx ssd and no problem all you have to do is wait to parted magic about 3 minutes to come on and then you choose what you like to do .
i had to secure erase my drive because if you have window 7 on and if you want to reinstall it you will not have the [delete] partition before the new install so this is why i had to erase it using parted magic

 

[fitzm]

Thanks for sharing your experience but I am looking for comprehensive test data proving Parted Magic's efficacy. In other words, many more than single sample size.

 

[WilliamM2]

I've never seen such data. But I have no reason to believe it doesn't erase the disk.

If your information is that valuable, and you really think someone will go to the time and expense to recover it, just write random data to the drive until it's completely full. Or destroy it in a fire.

 

[fitzm]

I was curious if any geeks on here (including Anand) has comprehensively tested SSD's using strictly PartedMagic & the latest forensic technologies. If anyone has solid non-anecdotal information (besides vendors own data) regarding PM please post.

 

[glugglug]

It's using the drives built in secure erase command, same as HDDErase does. Which is a single command for the whole drive.

So if your drive firmware for that command isn't buggy, it will work. If your firmware doesn't support ATA secure erase, it won't.