Sunday, June 3, 2018

hard drive - Can I "secure erase" a Samsung SSD without installing it?

I sometimes replace SSDs in our office PCs with bigger and faster ones. A few days after doing that, I want to wipe the old SSDs because they might contain sensitive company data.




Back in the old days, when we used HDDs, I just plugged them into my USB-SATA Docking station and wiped them by overwriting them with random data.



Obviously, we don't do that for SSDs; instead, we use the "secure erase" feature with some tool provided by the SSD manufacturer (Samsung Magician, in my case).



Unfortunately, Samsung Magician does not recognize an SSD connected via USB. Thus, the only way I found was to shut down my PC, crawl underneath my desk, disassemble my PC, install the drive as an internal drive, wipe it, and then do everything in reverse.



I'd like to avoid that. Can I somehow connect SSDs externally to my PC and still have them recognized my Samsung Magician (or securely erase them some other way)? I read about eSATA (external SATA), but my motherboard does not provide an eSATA connector.

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