Make sure you do the Sudo Su command first then it will work.. and also make you are capitalizing the letters when need to, just make sure you type it the exact way it looks...
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How to secure erase your SSD's on a Mac
- Thread starter VirtualRain
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Make sure you do the Sudo Su command first then it will work.. and also make you are capitalizing the letters when need to, just make sure you type it the exact way it looks...
Here are the results from my SSDs:
The 160Gb is NEW SSD, the 80Gb is ~6 months old.
Both have had the Intel SSD Toolbox v2 run on them and i've booted from a backup partition so these drives are empty as possible...
Intel G2 160Gb beats the Vertex 2
The 80Gb fairs abit worse thanks to the 20Mb/sec worse writes.
Edit: This SSD just keeps giving, with OS X Installed, Updated and all the Apps installed plus Lightroom making Previews it's managed this 3 times!:
The 160Gb is NEW SSD, the 80Gb is ~6 months old.
Both have had the Intel SSD Toolbox v2 run on them and i've booted from a backup partition so these drives are empty as possible...
Intel G2 160Gb beats the Vertex 2
The 80Gb fairs abit worse thanks to the 20Mb/sec worse writes.
Edit: This SSD just keeps giving, with OS X Installed, Updated and all the Apps installed plus Lightroom making Previews it's managed this 3 times!:
I doubt that.. Please provide pics which you could easily doctor.. So provide a picture taken with a camera!
Sorry for dumbing this down, but can someone walk me through this using Windows 7 on Boot Camp, or tell me what I'm doing wrong? When I was finished, Toolbox 2.0 would not even see the drive in the list of available drives.
Here's what I did:
Here's what I did:
- Formatted the SSD via a USB enclosure to FAT via Mac's Disk Utility
- Disconnected the USB enclosure
- Rebooted into Windows
- Reconnected the USB enclosure ... Windows Explorer recognizes the drive just fine
- Reformatted the SSD to NTFS via Quick Format ... note, Windows Explorer still recognizes the drive
- Launched Toolbox 2.0 yet this SSD does not appear in the list
I would suggest you try using the process outlined in Post #1 instead. As far as I know, Intel's toolbox is not designed for USB connected drives and it's support for drives connected directly via SATA to the ICH is also spotty.
Thanks, VR, but unfortunately for whatever reason - my guess maybe some nuance with my Newer Technology USB / SATA HD dock - I could not get any combination of the solutions mentioned here to work over the past 6 hours.
Oh well, live 'n learn. I just gave Amazon $14 for an Icy Dock and will simply put the SSD in my Mac Pro bay and use the Intel Toolbox to restore it.
okay here is the deal..
I have a Macbook Pro (2010) with a Vertex 2 SDD with about.. 60% degradtion (yes im serious) and I'm trying to do a secure erase via bootable Gparted cd rom..
Now Gparted boots fine but when I issue the " hdparm -I /dev/sda " command and the output command would say " Access Denied " and it seems to be that way with every other command.. it's like I don't have access to my ssd at all!!!
How do I fix this.. I only have my macbook pro and my cousin's netbook so... can I get some help?
I have a Macbook Pro (2010) with a Vertex 2 SDD with about.. 60% degradtion (yes im serious) and I'm trying to do a secure erase via bootable Gparted cd rom..
Now Gparted boots fine but when I issue the " hdparm -I /dev/sda " command and the output command would say " Access Denied " and it seems to be that way with every other command.. it's like I don't have access to my ssd at all!!!
How do I fix this.. I only have my macbook pro and my cousin's netbook so... can I get some help?
I don't know... perhaps try prefacing the commands with "sudo" to force superuser? I'm not a Linux guru by any stretch.
Wow. Ive been reading this thread and I'm pretty much freaking out
I'm receiving my OWC 240GB Mercury SSD tomorrow.
I'm gonna use it in my 12core Macpro as a boot drive!
So basicly in 6months time I will have a slow drive that I need to format completely to get up to speed? This is a work computer and I cannot affort the time (or problems) to format and copy the system back. Btw: I thought timemachine backup isnt 100% like it was? Some things are not backupped right?
Anyone with OWC drive and some advise how to handle it in osx?
I really hope there is a TRIM option in 10.7
From OWC's blog:
Doesn’t Slow Down With Use Like Ordinary SSDs
Ordinary SSDs offer fast read/write performance during first initial uses, but then experience significant write speed degradation over repeated usage. Independent simulation tests by leading drive performance experts (http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld.html) confirm the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD’s ultra-efficient Block Management & Wear Leveling technologies are able to eliminate virtually any reduction in data transfer speeds over heavy long term usage of the drive and without dependency on less than effective OS TRIM management.
I'm receiving my OWC 240GB Mercury SSD tomorrow.
I'm gonna use it in my 12core Macpro as a boot drive!
So basicly in 6months time I will have a slow drive that I need to format completely to get up to speed? This is a work computer and I cannot affort the time (or problems) to format and copy the system back. Btw: I thought timemachine backup isnt 100% like it was? Some things are not backupped right?
Anyone with OWC drive and some advise how to handle it in osx?
I really hope there is a TRIM option in 10.7
From OWC's blog:
Doesn’t Slow Down With Use Like Ordinary SSDs
Ordinary SSDs offer fast read/write performance during first initial uses, but then experience significant write speed degradation over repeated usage. Independent simulation tests by leading drive performance experts (http://macperformanceguide.com/SSD-RealWorld.html) confirm the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD’s ultra-efficient Block Management & Wear Leveling technologies are able to eliminate virtually any reduction in data transfer speeds over heavy long term usage of the drive and without dependency on less than effective OS TRIM management.
I wouldn't worry about doing a Secure Erase unless you are changing your disk config or re-installing your OS from scratch anyway. In which case, this process will only add a few extra steps to what is already a big undertaking.
With the garbage collection in current gen SSD's, you won't notice any impact in performance unless your drive is getting full and you start trying to write large files to it that cause it to scramble to organize free blocks after a big write.
With the garbage collection in current gen SSD's, you won't notice any impact in performance unless your drive is getting full and you start trying to write large files to it that cause it to scramble to organize free blocks after a big write.
Here are the results from my SSDs:
The 160Gb is NEW SSD, the 80Gb is ~6 months old.
Intel G2 160Gb beats the Vertex 2
Me thinks NOT:
120 GB Vertex 2:
Results 361.99
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.5 (10H574)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro5,1
Drive Type OCZ-VERTEX2 3.5
Disk Test 361.99
Sequential 221.53
Uncached Write 301.86 185.34 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 278.17 157.39 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 118.44 34.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 369.58 185.75 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 989.25
Uncached Write 1451.50 153.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 488.11 156.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 3652.68 25.88 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 968.95 179.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
I didn't make it through this 4 page post before trying the secure erase
I found an old HP WinXP box and tried using my Voyager dock. Neither USB nor FW400 worked. Thought it had to do with the nVidia graphics driver problem that is reported on many forums. Finally read the Intel Toolbox pdf and realized it had to be over SATA. Unplugging the power successfully unlocked the SSD for secure erase.
The first time I ran the secure erase under Intel SSD Toolbox I got the "fail" message. Had a minor heart attack and then reran secure erase and it passed. Ran the fast and full diagnostics and no problems found. Just for kicks I ran the secure erase again and it failed. Ran a second time and it passed. Putting this info here in case anyone else runs into this problem ... don't panic
Just used this to do a fresh reinstall of Snow Leopard
I wanted to do a fresh re-install of snow leopard on my MBP. I've been using a Corsair P256, and was wanting a proper way to erase the SSD and found this thread.
Tried it using Gparted, but disk was said to be froze. Downloaded Ubuntu 10.10 and used it as a Live CD. SSD still said to be frozen, closed the lid on the MBP and waited for it to go to sleep, opened the lid and typed hdparm -I /dev/sda and sure enough, the SSD was NOT frozen and went on with the commands.
Thank you for putting this all together. Next time I need to do this, I'll just skip Gparted and go straight to Ubuntu. Thanks again.
I wanted to do a fresh re-install of snow leopard on my MBP. I've been using a Corsair P256, and was wanting a proper way to erase the SSD and found this thread.
Tried it using Gparted, but disk was said to be froze. Downloaded Ubuntu 10.10 and used it as a Live CD. SSD still said to be frozen, closed the lid on the MBP and waited for it to go to sleep, opened the lid and typed hdparm -I /dev/sda and sure enough, the SSD was NOT frozen and went on with the commands.
Thank you for putting this all together. Next time I need to do this, I'll just skip Gparted and go straight to Ubuntu. Thanks again.
I'll reference your success with this method in the OP.
Glad this is working for people. I just redid this myself over the Christmas break (using step 2.a. with a USB controller).
Glad this is working for people. I just redid this myself over the Christmas break (using step 2.a. with a USB controller).
I couldn't get the famous hdderase utility to work (either froze upon detecting the drives, or fails with some other lame error). So I tried booting to Kubuntu installed on an old HD in an old P-III system, and followed the method outlined in the OP. This is on a crap-tastic Super Talent 8GB DuraDrive ZIF/IDE drive. It seemed to work fine; no errors and the output was as expected. However, disk administrator on an XP box cannot initialize the drive, just gives some sort of generic non-useful error. I put it back in the iPod video that I had installed it in, and iTunes wouldn't complete the restore process, but didn't give any errors. I put it back in the Linux box and here's some of the output from the hdparm -I command:
I see that it says locked and expired: security count. I did put in the correct password to lock and unlock the drive, so I'm not sure what the problem is. --security-unlock, --security-disable, and any other attempt to manipulate the drive results in an I/O error. None of the computers I install it to prompt for a password at boot. Any suggestions?
Super Talent "support" has really not been useful, and I would not recommend buying any of their products based solely on the support (or lack thereof) alone. SSDs are a relatively new and still-improving technology, and were perhaps introduced before all of the bugs were worked out in order to satisfy demand (like that hasn't happened before, LOL), so support is definitely key...
edit: they're sort of helping me out but it's somewhat tedious; I sometimes need to follow up with them more than once to get a response if it's been more than 2 business days. So far, it may be a firmware problem (found a post somewhere else on the internet with a similar problem but with a different manufacturer) but we'll see. I did follow the procedure correctly, so I don't think it was my fault I'm just afraid now to try it with my other drives, for obvious reasons.
Code:
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
enabled
locked
not frozen
expired: security count
not supported: enhanced erase
Security level maximum
2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
HW reset results:
CBLID- above Vih
Device num = 0I see that it says locked and expired: security count. I did put in the correct password to lock and unlock the drive, so I'm not sure what the problem is. --security-unlock, --security-disable, and any other attempt to manipulate the drive results in an I/O error. None of the computers I install it to prompt for a password at boot. Any suggestions?
Super Talent "support" has really not been useful, and I would not recommend buying any of their products based solely on the support (or lack thereof) alone. SSDs are a relatively new and still-improving technology, and were perhaps introduced before all of the bugs were worked out in order to satisfy demand (like that hasn't happened before, LOL), so support is definitely key...
edit: they're sort of helping me out but it's somewhat tedious; I sometimes need to follow up with them more than once to get a response if it's been more than 2 business days. So far, it may be a firmware problem (found a post somewhere else on the internet with a similar problem but with a different manufacturer) but we'll see. I did follow the procedure correctly, so I don't think it was my fault
I'm just afraid now to try it with my other drives, for obvious reasons.
Last edited:
Alright mate, calm down.
Other people got worse results than you did.
And besides, 30 points at this level is neither here nor there.
You can simply set it to sleep manually. It should be one of the displayed options if you go to System->Quit...
I found a way to force it to sleep through the command line but then I couldn't get it to wake back up no matter what I tried. :/
I tried this but when the computer woke it couldn't detect the SSD.
Happened to me as well. 10.10 refused to recognize my SSD at all. My solution was to use Ubuntu 10.04 (LTS) instead.
[MBP7,1 / X25M-G2]