Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Flying Fox, Ryu Connor
cheesyking wrote:Sounds like the secure erase didn't wipe the bootloader making it a "not-so-secure-erase"
cheesyking wrote:I'm not sure, how did you do the secure erase?
MadManOriginal wrote:Maybe Parted Magic didn't get the previous installation's Recovery Partition or EFI System Partition (if you're using a UEFI system.) Did you see multiple partitions like that in Parted Magic before the secure erase but not after? Or did you see them when you chose the OS partition in Windows installer? Did you format the whole drive during Windows install the second time?
You may want to use the SSD manufacturer's utility instead.
Ryu Connor wrote:Windows has a built in secure erase as an option.
Secure erasing is not necessary before an install of an OS. TRIM will clean up.
Boot from the windows media and select repair your install. Login and choose the command prompt.
Type diskpart
Type list disk and find the disk you want to secure erase
Type select disk # - the number of the disk you want to secure erase
Type clean all - this will secure erase the drive
Ryu Connor wrote:Yes.
You don't need TRIM to execute this task.
Just don't select the wrong drive.
Ryu Connor wrote:Boot from the windows media and select repair your install. Login and choose the command prompt.
Jon1984 wrote:Ryu Connor wrote:Boot from the windows media and select repair your install. Login and choose the command prompt.
Can you tell me how to get here?
Ryu Connor wrote:Boot from the Windows 8 media
http://www.cloudtec.ch/assets/template/img/blog/windows8safemode/windows8repair.gif
Jon1984 wrote:For mistake I've downloaded diskmark info utility, and I saw something that scared me a bit, because some of the values implied that the ssd were damaged. There are 2 thinks it can happen:
- the disk info doesn't work well with raided volumes and shows incorrect information or
- i've damaged the drives by using external erase mbr with parted magic?
Can someone figure this out? (It's strange because my ssd's were bought in different times and some of the information on diskmark info is the same for the 2 of them)
Jon1984 wrote:* I have to add that when choosing secure erase in parted magic and clicking ok the action is so fast i can't see the information box saying if the drive is secure erased or not, so i'm not sure if it's normal to a secure erase in a 90gb drive to take less then a second...
just brew it! wrote:Jon1984 wrote:For mistake I've downloaded diskmark info utility, and I saw something that scared me a bit, because some of the values implied that the ssd were damaged. There are 2 thinks it can happen:
- the disk info doesn't work well with raided volumes and shows incorrect information or
- i've damaged the drives by using external erase mbr with parted magic?
Can someone figure this out? (It's strange because my ssd's were bought in different times and some of the information on diskmark info is the same for the 2 of them)
What is this info that leads you to believe the drives are damaged?Jon1984 wrote:* I have to add that when choosing secure erase in parted magic and clicking ok the action is so fast i can't see the information box saying if the drive is secure erased or not, so i'm not sure if it's normal to a secure erase in a 90gb drive to take less then a second...
That does sound a little suspicious to me. But SSDs aren't like HDDs where every sector needs to get overwritten to erase all of the data; they could (in effect) just be doing the equivalent of a whole drive TRIM. This would be less secure in the sense that a really determined person with detailed knowledge of the drive firmware's internals (and the ability to hack and load custom firmware) theoretically might be able to recover data from the "erased" drive, but for most practical purposes it would be equivalent to erasing the entire drive.
MadManOriginal wrote:I wouldn't worry about the speed of the secure erase, it is virtually instant. I've done it a couple of times on SSDs, the first time I was suspicious too but found confirmation that it takes almost no time.
Jon1984 wrote:I don't have trim, its a raid array with a p67 chipset... Is it possible to do this anyway?
frumper15 wrote:Jon1984 wrote:I don't have trim, its a raid array with a p67 chipset... Is it possible to do this anyway?
It sounds like you might be able to enable TRIM with your chipset according to this article:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6477/trim ... boards-too
Jon1984 wrote:Its really fast I guess, other times it was also very fast. But because there was some information left in the ssd after the secure erase (the previous windows boot as i refereed in the beginning of the topic) i was a little worried that it wasnt doing the erase. But performance is excellent so it must have done it
Flying Fox wrote:Jon1984 wrote:Its really fast I guess, other times it was also very fast. But because there was some information left in the ssd after the secure erase (the previous windows boot as i refereed in the beginning of the topic) i was a little worried that it wasnt doing the erase. But performance is excellent so it must have done it
Does not make sense that a secure erase will leave data behind. Sounds like the BCD is in the HDD instead. When you re-install Windows 8 did you unplug the HDD and leave the SSD plugged in alone just to be sure?