How to secure erase your SSD's on a Mac

[Maclver]

I have a Macbook Air (no optical drive, and I can't remove the SSD itself). Is there any way I could still restore the performance of its SSD? It's a 2009 model so it doesn't support TRIM either.

I would like to know the answer to this question... But I have the 2011 with the OWC 6G ssd?

 

[Figure]

XBMCbuntu 11.0 LiveCD

New user; registered to post this in hopes to help others. I have an iMac 27" Late 2009 (iMac 11,1). Replaced HDD with SSD and wanted to secure erase but didn't want to reopen the iMac to pull the SSD and also couldn't make Ubunutu or other linux variants successfully sleep/wake to 'unfreeze' the SSD and I didn't have a spare monitor like the first post gives as an alternative. This sleep/wake issue was mainly because the proprietary ATI drivers wouldn't load and accordingly the system would fail to recognize the graphics subsystem to resume from suspend. I tried to do an actual install of Ubuntu/Linux to USB drives to try to get the ATI drivers running off a bootable USB drive... needless to say this was a nightmare (multiple failed attempts at booting with 'reFit' using all sorts of different methods).

Fast forward to yesterday: XBMCbuntu 11.0 LiveCD was just released yesterday 3/25 and boots my iMac perfectly with ATI drivers running without incident. I can now sleep the computer and wake it perfectly and sure enough the SSD is not frozen, so with a quick pop over into a terminal shell, I can proceed with an hdparm secure erase. Here's some steps if it helps:

1. Boot XBMCbuntu 11.0 LiveCD
2. Select Suspend from Power Menu (lower left corner Power icon)
3. Resume from suspend by pressing power button on iMac
4. Press Ctrl + Alt + F1 on keyboard to get terminal/shell
5. Type sudo passwd root and just hit enter at password (this is so you can proceed to use hdparm with sudo privileges as the default sudo password of 'xbmc' doesn't seem to work with this new release)
6. Type xbmc for "Enter new UNIX password" prompt. (It'll ask you to confirm it.)
7. Proceed with using sudo hdparm as linked to in the first post using the sudo password of 'xbmc' if it asks

 

[rdpbass]

New user; registered to post this in hopes to help others. I have an iMac 27" Late 2009 (iMac 11,1). Replaced HDD with SSD and wanted to secure erase but didn't want to reopen the iMac to pull the SSD and also couldn't make Ubunutu or other linux variants successfully sleep/wake to 'unfreeze' the SSD and I didn't have a spare monitor like the first post gives as an alternative. This sleep/wake issue was mainly because the proprietary ATI drivers wouldn't load and accordingly the system would fail to recognize the graphics subsystem to resume from suspend. I tried to do an actual install of Ubuntu/Linux to USB drives to try to get the ATI drivers running off a bootable USB drive... needless to say this was a nightmare (multiple failed attempts at booting with 'reFit' using all sorts of different methods).

Fast forward to yesterday: XBMCbuntu 11.0 LiveCD was just released yesterday 3/25 and boots my iMac perfectly with ATI drivers running without incident. I can now sleep the computer and wake it perfectly and sure enough the SSD is not frozen, so with a quick pop over into a terminal shell, I can proceed with an hdparm secure erase. Here's some steps if it helps:

1. Boot XBMCbuntu 11.0 LiveCD
2. Select Suspend from Power Menu (lower left corner Power icon)
3. Resume from suspend by pressing power button on iMac
4. Press Ctrl + Alt + F1 on keyboard to get terminal/shell
5. Type sudo passwd root and just hit enter at password (this is so you can proceed to use hdparm with sudo privileges as the default sudo password of 'xbmc' doesn't seem to work with this new release)
6. Type xbmc for "Enter new UNIX password" prompt. (It'll ask you to confirm it.)
7. Proceed with using sudo hdparm as linked to in the first post using the sudo password of 'xbmc' if it asks

Just tried this on my 2010 iMac worked perfect. I had to use two dashes in front of the commands.
sudo hadparm --user-master u --security-set-pass x /dev/sdx
sudo time hdparm --user-master u --security-erase x /dev/sdx

 

[mustgroove]

Quick question... is the OP's method applicable to OWC SSDs? There seems to be some debate about whether security erase is necessary on Sandforce SSDs...

I'm using the OWC Accelsior PCIe SSD, is there an agreed-up security erase method for this particular SSD?

 

[VirtualRain]

Quick question... is the OP's method applicable to OWC SSDs? There seems to be some debate about whether security erase is necessary on Sandforce SSDs...

I'm using the OWC Accelsior PCIe SSD, is there an agreed-up security erase method for this particular SSD?

This Secure Erase is really only required for old school drives that don't support TRIM. All modern drives including Sandforce support TRIM when NOT in RAID. The method mentioned in this thread is also for SATA drives. Since the Accelsior is PCIe and uses multiple SandForce blade drives in RAID, there's no telling what Garbage Collection and/or TRIM like features they've implemented. I would contact OWC and ask.

 

[josif]

Here's the story:
I own an 27 " Imac late 2009. the harddisk was dead. so i decided to install an intel 320 ssd to replace the dead hdd.
Unfortunately, the new ssd was soon dead too for its famous 8MB bug.
I tried to find a solution on the web. I used xbmcbuntu to try to do a secure erase. I followed the instruction on the web. However. after i entered the command for secure erase, it shown that the command is issuing, and it stopped responding. I rebooted the machine.
I was going to try a secure erase again, the mac was not able to boot from a CD anymore. a dark screen appeared and no response anymore
I ran disk utility and the volume of the ssd was recovered to 120GB, but I was not able to mount it. when I tried to format it, mac tells me that " unable to write to the last block of the device".

Please advice how I am going to fix this. Thanks