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How do you destroy an SSD?
First, let's focus on some "dont's." These are tried and true methods used to make sure that your data is unrecoverable from spinning hard disk drives. But these don't carry over to the SSD world.
Degaussing – applying a very strong magnet – has been an accepted method for erasing data off of magnetic media like spinning hard drives for decades. But it doesn't work on SSDs. SSDs don't store data magnetically, so applying a strong magnetic field won't do anything.
Spinning hard drives are also susceptible to physical damage, so some folks take a hammer and nail or even a drill to the hard drive and pound holes through the top. That's an almost surefire way to make sure your data won't be read by anyone else. But inside an SSD chassis that looks like a 2.5-inch hard disk drive is actually just a series of memory chips. Drilling holes into the case may not do much, or may only damage a few of the chips. So that's off the table too.
Erasing free space or reformatting a drive by rewriting it zeroes is an effective way to clear data off on a hard drive, but not so much on an SSD. In fact, in a recent update to its Mac Disk Utility, Apple removed the secure erase feature altogether because they say it isn't necessary. So what's the best way to make sure your data is unrecoverable?
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Friday March 17 2017, @06:23PM
This advice doesnt help me when I already have drives to ensure safe disposal of.
Worst yet, the drives are not mine, and I was not there to repeat your advice when they bought them 5 years ago. I am now supposed to eliminate the risks involved in their disposal, though.
Your advice is, unfortunately, not useful. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure; your preventative measures aren't going to cure anything when a cure is required.
It's like sex-- the baby we have now won't go away if we use a condom later. That process will just break and give us more babies that will grow into real problems over time...
(I would have said it was like IT security, but the port openings and negotiating with the app owner regarding administrative permissions are a lot less fun when not involving a social networking opportunity and instead involves a network firewall.)