How to Secure Erase a Intel 750 SSD that is the system disk?

[Franzi]

Hi

I am looking for a way to Secure Erase my Intel 750 SSD (400GB, PCIe).

The 2 options Intel is offering are the SSD Toolbox and the Command Line based Data Center Tools. For obvious reasons neither can Secure Erase the SSD while an active OS is running on it.

I thought maybe one way would be loading up the Windows 8.1 installer on an USB stick since it comes with the pre-installation environment that gives me access to the Command Line, I could load up the NVMe driver at the disk selection screen and then try to see if the Data Center Tools work without a full Windows environment.

The other way would be a Linux Live CD/USB. From what I read in the Intel documentation that would require a custom Kernel with the NVMe driver I need to compile. I do know Linux well enough to do that but think its a bit over the top just to issue a proper NVMe Secure Erase.

What is the best way to do this?

Many thanks in advance

 

[razel]

'Best' will be a topic of debate. I would go the easiest, least time involved route. That would be installing the SSD in another computer where the SSD Toolbox is installed. The issue is with SATA SSDs you can boot up the computer into the OS, go to standby, carefully hot install the SATA SSD and then secure erase. I'm pretty sure you can't do that with PCI-E. Or I wouldn't with a $600 part.

The reason to swap when the OS is running is to avoid booting up the wrong partition on that other computer.

 

[sm625]

'Best' will be a topic of debate. I would go the easiest, least time involved route. That would be installing the SSD in another computer where the SSD Toolbox is installed. The issue is with SATA SSDs you can boot up the computer into the OS, go to standby, carefully hot install the SATA SSD and then secure erase. I'm pretty sure you can't do that with PCI-E. Or I wouldn't with a $600 part.

The reason to swap when the OS is running is to avoid booting up the wrong partition on that other computer.

It's not that hard to avoid booting the wrong partition or drive, even when they are identical. The easiest and most dummy proof way is to simply create a file on the desktop. When you boot with both drives installed, and that file is not there, then you know you booted off the wrong drive.

 

[Fred B]

The partition got to be removed anyway before secure erase so there should be no problem booting from the wrong ssd . Thats the way it went with G2/G3 could be that with 750 partition does not matter , but it is kind of extra security to not erase something with partition .Would just setup a parallel windows on separate hd/ssd for this operation , must be done on stable platform . Would not secure erase for other reason than security , like selling the drive and all data must be eliminated . But there could be another reason to perform secure erase that is needed for something else.

 

[Coup27]

Still cannot believe Intel have not provided a bootable secure erase utility.

 

[Franzi]

Thanks everyone for the input. Yeah Intel should provide a bootable image for situations like this. Another idea I had was creating a Windows-To-Go USB but I read using them will lock any internal storage devices for security reasons. I guess I will go with the option to just do a quick Win 8.1 install on another disk to SE the Intel 750.

 

[Franzi]

Alright I found a working solution now. I used a tool called WinToUSB to clone my system disk to an USB stick with the Intel SSD Toolbox installed on it. Booting from it allowed me to SE the 750.

 

[Coup27]

Neat idea.