Folks,
What does "secure erase" actually do with SSD-based Macs (I assume stock SSD with TRIM support) ?
Is there any official description of the process ? Is it actually worth the trouble ?
SDD are pretty nasty beast when it comes to securely erasing them - it would be nice to have an formal statement about what to expect from this feature
Hello Godzila,
If you are looking for more information regarding Secure Erase and solid state drives, you may find the following article useful (apologies if you have already seen it):
Note: With an SSD drive, Secure Erase and Erasing Free Space are not available in Disk Utility. These options are not needed for an SSD drive because a standard erase makes it difficult to recover data from an SSD. For more security, consider turning on FileVault encryption when you start using your SSD drive.
OS X: About Disk Utility's erase free space feature - Apple Support
Sincerely,
- Brenden
Thanks - interesting read that confirms my thoughts...
The finder UI definitely proposes to *secure erase" items on an SSD drive (be it Apple "blessed" or user replaced), irrespective of the TRIM support within the OS.
And it seemingly does something (at the very least the procedure takes considerably longer than a "standard" erase).
The question remains: what does that command actually do ? Is it "simply" a useless (and potentially dangerous) leftover from the early versions of MacOS X that did not have any knowledge of SSDs or is there more to the story ?
I'm surprised there is no tech note abut this subject.
Secure erase on SSD - what does it _really_ do ?
