Secure Erase or Quick Format (SSD)

[thescreensavers]

I am swapping my SSD into my new laptop. It will be used as a boot drive so when I install W7 should I just do a normal "format" through the installation which will just partition the drive basically.

Or should I do a secure erase?

 

[Bubbaleone]

Secure erase is the best practice for making sure you don't have problems during reinstallation of Windows on an SSD or HDD that had a previous OS.

 

[razel]

Just format. As proven by Anand on several reviews. A format can restore performance every bit as good as a secure erase without the seriousness.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Just format. As proven by Anand on several reviews. A format can restore performance every bit as good as a secure erase without the seriousness.

Do you have a link to show this?

 

[taltamir]

It depends on what you mean by secure erase.

Secure erase using the proper tool will trim the whole drive. (and thats it)
Secure erase by the wrong tool (build for an HDD) will 0 fill the drive (really bad for SSD).

Either way, its completely unnecessary in windows 7 since quick formating an SSD with windows 7+ will TRIM the entire partition.

And trim is only needed for a used drive anyways, not a brand new one.

 

[Yellowbeard]

The actual SE process for an SSD is not actually "TRIM". It's done by sending a voltage spike to the NAND. TRIM cannot do all that a proper SE can.

 

[OlafSicky]

So how would one SE a ssd ?

 

[WilliamM2]

Secure erase is the best practice for making sure you don't have problems during reinstallation of Windows on an SSD or HDD that had a previous OS.

As long as you format, what kind of problems would you have re-installing without a secure erase on an SSD or HDD? I've never heard of such a thing.

 

[taltamir]

The actual SE process for an SSD is not actually "TRIM". It's done by sending a voltage spike to the NAND. TRIM cannot do all that a proper SE can.

A voltage spike? that sounds like it would damage the cell not erase it.
Erasing cells is done by fully DRAINING the charge from them.
And I am 100% sure it does in fact TRIM everything, this is why early on before OS TRIM was available people would secure erase their drives to restore new drive performance.
It might ALSO manually push for the immediate erasing of all cells and only inform you it is done after all cells have been erased... But that would be in addition to the TRIM not instead of and honestly its not actually necessary.

Unnecessary because the way TRIM works. TRIM informs the drive that sectors contain garbage data. Wear leveling algorithms can choose to read-modify-write on erase groups to clear up some garbage data (preferably a lot with minimal amount of data retained)... but choose the erase group with the most garbage and least useful data to ensure minimal write amplification. Typically though, the focus would be on erasing fully junk groups. If 100% of an erasable group (a group of 128 sectors, typically) is marked as garbage data then there is absolutely no reason at all to NOT immediately erase them. Thus if you TRIM 100% of the drive then you have started an unstoppable process wherein all the data on it is going to be permanently deleted by the GC as fast as it can as long as the drive has power. A process that takes mere minutes

In fact that is something that is bothering police forensics. A drive can be quick formatted (trim everything). they can disconnect it within seconds, but as soon as power is restored to it, it will begin systematically deleting everything and do so at a very rapid pace and cannot be stopped, recovered, or the data verified (to prove that the data is not planted, forensics only deal with disk images which are hashed and then compared to the hash of the original drive after the investigation)
http://www.jdfsl.org/subscriptions/JDFSL-V5N3-Bell.pdf

 

[thescreensavers]

It depends on what you mean by secure erase.

Secure erase using the proper tool will trim the whole drive. (and thats it)
Secure erase by the wrong tool (build for an HDD) will 0 fill the drive (really bad for SSD).

Either way, its completely unnecessary in windows 7 since quick formating an SSD with windows 7+ will TRIM the entire partition.

And trim is only needed for a used drive anyways, not a brand new one.

I will be using Parted Magic which can deal with SSDs

It sends the Secure erase command to the SSDs controller which sends a higher voltage to the Nand to erase data.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1227597/how-to-secure-erase-your-solid-state-drive-ssd-with-parted-magic

 

[taltamir]

delete

 

[taltamir]

I will be using Parted Magic which can deal with SSDs

It sends the Secure erase command to the SSDs controller which sends a higher voltage to the Nand to erase data.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1227597/how-to-secure-erase-your-solid-state-drive-ssd-with-parted-magic

According to the link, the voltage spike is the method via which nand cells are erased.

Also, that is just a forum post. And neither of the 2 sources he cites contain the word voltage. (first one appears to be about HDDs actually)

If he is right and a voltage spike IS how nand cells are erased (I was positive it was via draining their charge fully), then it doesn't really contradict my argument that secure erase works by performing an erase cycle on all cells. Merely my statement on HOW erasing occurs.

He does however clarify that the ENTIRE drive is erase simultaneously rather than sequentially. that DOES contradict what I said. I might be wrong on that point. However AFAIK NAND controllers were limited in how many cells then can access simultaneously (based on my recollection from an anandtech article that said the latest sandforce chips improved sequential uncompressible write performance by increasing the number of erase engines)

Anyways, it still effectively TRIMs the entire drive (all sectors are marked as garbage when secure erased). And there is still absolutely no reason to do it when reinstalling windows (a simple quick format will get you identical results).. unless your controller encountered a bug that causes it to be unable to GC post full drive TRIM. In which case a secure erase might cause it to recover from that.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Keep in mind that some storage areas of the drive are protected from the OS and therefore isolated from TRIM. A secure erase will erase ALL of these areas whereas TRIM cannot.

I have not tested a formatted drive vs a SEd drive to see if in fact 1 method results in better performance than the other. That's not really useful information to me. If are reinstalling an OS to a previously used drive, SE makes the most sense.

And, I've had great luck with Parted Magic. I used it almost daily. Solid choice IMO.

 

[rgallant]

I will be using Parted Magic which can deal with SSDs

It sends the Secure erase command to the SSDs controller which sends a higher voltage to the Nand to erase data.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1227597/how-to-secure-erase-your-solid-state-drive-ssd-with-parted-magic

-looks like that guide is not the one if you have a nvidia card in your system ,
-I was so pissed with this vodoo crap , I have given up on ssd raid for the os even if trim is now working in raid 0..

 

[taltamir]

Keep in mind that some storage areas of the drive are protected from the OS and therefore isolated from TRIM. A secure erase will erase ALL of these areas whereas TRIM cannot.

Those areas have nothing to trim.
TRIM = mark area as containing garbage info.
Spare area = already marked as containing garbage/no info by definition.
This is because "spare area" is actually just a case where a drive physical space is larger than the virtual drive presented to the OS via the lookup table. Wear leveling spreads the data out over the entire physical drive.

A drive that has been trimmed, in effect has all free space act as "spare area" to be purged for data as soon as convenient. A drive that has been 100% trimmed had all of the virtual lookup table allocated space marked as garbage.

The only reason spare area will contain any data at all instead of being fully erased is if it is part of an erase group that contains non spare area which delays the erasure to ensure low write amplification. The moment the non spare area is trimmed all the data in said erase group is now known to be garbage and the controller will immediately queue it up for full erasure.

If are reinstalling an OS to a previously used drive, SE makes the most sense.

No it doesn't. You should only secure erase an SSD if an adversary is breaking down your door and have mere seconds to destroy all evidence.

 

[Coup27]

I haven't read all the posts yet but when I did my UEFI/GPT and BIOS/MBR experiment I found I could only switch the partition style by secure erasing my Samsung 830 via the Samsung secure erase tool (or any other correct SSD SE tool I presume).

If the disk was in GPT and I simply clicked format within disk management or at the installation stage, it would not let me install in MBR as the disk was still GPT (and vice versa). Simply clicking format within disk management is not the same as a secure erase.

 

[taltamir]

I haven't read all the posts yet but when I did my UEFI/GPT and BIOS/MBR experiment I found I could only switch the partition style by secure erasing my Samsung 830 via the Samsung secure erase tool (or any other correct SSD SE tool I presume).

If the disk was in GPT and I simply clicked format within disk management or at the installation stage, it would not let me install in MBR as the disk was still GPT (and vice versa). Simply clicking format within disk management is not the same as a secure erase.

Thats a problem with the windows 7 installer.
You can convert it without a secure erase using other tools, like GParted (this is what I had to use to convert from MBR to GPT on my Intel 520)

 

[Yellowbeard]

I was not aware that this data was wrong or outdated.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/11

 

[taltamir]

I was not aware that this data was wrong or outdated.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/11

It is outdated. That article is dated 3/18/2009 12:00:00 AM.
4 months before Windows 7 was released. Windows 7 is the first OS to have TRIM.
The information in the article WAS correct when it was written in early 2009.

 

[Yellowbeard]

TRIM is taken into consideration in that article, on the page before the one I linked. The TRIM standard and ATA Secure Erase standards were fully in place long before the article was written.

In every SSD tool box/utility I see, there's a Secure Erase function. Seems odd that the people that make the drives would include a tool that is not needed.

 

[taltamir]

TRIM is taken into consideration in that article, on the page before the one I linked. The TRIM standard and ATA Secure Erase standards were fully in place long before the article was written.

The standard was in place, the implementation was not.

Lets look at the very first paragraph

Based on my explanation there’s one sure-fire way to make your drive fast again. Formatting/deleting everything on the drive won’t work because those pages on the drive will remain full of data.

This was true then (because standards without implementations means there is no way to do something). It is false today.

A quick-format with win7 will restore full performance by trimming the entire partition that got formatted.